


the silver lining still remains

by witchfall



Series: a garden in detroit [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: A disappearance mystery in the background, Bodyguard, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Non-sexual nonconsensual villain problems, Post-Game, Slow Burn, slight AU where humans are allowed back to Detroit kinda early, thoughtful vignettes with plot i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-05-27 13:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 115,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchfall/pseuds/witchfall
Summary: The Detroit Volunteer Corps does what it can to pick up the pieces of a city setting a new path. Emma Ibori, resident carpenter and self-proclaimed loner, builds things to keep the thoughts at bay.Connor thinks he has a handle on what it means to be alive. But he can barely see through the guilt for all the things he didn’t know -- or understand why the 3 a.m. nights have begun to settle so heavily on his chest.Then a case of disappearances strikes too close to home. And everything shifts again.





	1. in the court of the new

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going at this with the optimism that rebuilding would need to happen alongside humans, in some respects, which is the group Emma represents. So hopefully that forgives any weirdness about the way the city functions!

_February 2039._

_Her teeth clatter in the cold, but she stands with boots firmly implanted into slushy snow, legs straight, back upright. She is among the few volunteers, hands wrapped tightly around a disposable coffee cup, waiting outside the gate to enter the city of androids._

_She remembers the beginning, how bright and biting and sheer and strange it felt to be standing there, waiting to be acknowledged. To feel at the precipice of something, foggy and echoing._

_She remembers the brown-eyed android -- Connor -- opening the gate for her first, watching her impassively, LED light in his temple spinning yellow and red. She remembers brushing past, smiling tightly, holding aloft her coffee, holding herself together just long enough to find her post._

_They pass one another, like motes of dust on the wind._

_She remembers this every day. How she hoisted her carpentry tool bag up her shoulder and hoped the universe would let her go another day without pushing her back out the way she came. Back to fucking nothing._

_How once upon a time, they had no idea what was coming._

* * *

 

_October 2039._

Emma lies on the broken stage, auburn curls smashed into a thick mesh against her back, and she wonders, not for the last time, how she always manages to fuck it up the first time.

Measure twice, cut once, _yes_ , but it’s like she’s cursed. Measure 300 times, cut half way through and it’s already a done deal -- a beam too short, a board with the wrong notch cut out of it…she stretches a thick-gloved hand up toward the vaulted, dark-wood ceiling and makes a grasping motion as if she can catch one of the few working lights, so high up as to be a pinpoint, in her palm. Useless. It’s already 8 p.m.

She sighs and rolls onto her side, eying the digital blueprint tablet she laid next to her head. The calculations roll on in her head -- materials times nails divided by minutes left in the day. Add to that how long it’ll be before she can return tomorrow…

Her eyes flutter closed in defeat, muscles twitching in release as she finally lets herself lay down for longer than 15 seconds. She dreams of something lovely from the woodpile, charred they say from lightning -- wet now, it’s known, from time. In the house foyer, half a chandelier hangs forlornly from a rusty chain over tile that once gleamed, she was sure, like candy...

“This is Detective Anderson, requesting back up.”

Her eyes fly open as her dispatcher radio picks up a familiar voice. She rolls her head to spot the old brick-like thing, and reaches a hand to it instinctively.

“Connor, what’s your status?” the dispatcher replies.

The calm android voice says a number of codes -- ones she is still learning, but something for outdoor altercation, an address that was only a few blocks from here, actually, and then: “Do not come armed. Victim requires a counselor.”

She sits up.

“Counselors respond,” the dispatcher says.

No. No. Three days straight of 5 hour nights of sleep were catching up to her. She could feel it in the sagging skin under her eyes, the yawning pain in the back of her skull.

She waits a few moments. A number of voices she recognizes respond -- Talia, Christopher, Daisy, most all of them farther than she, and most of all them occupied with their own cases. She lays her head down for a moment. The Detroit Volunteer Corps was running thin these days. She tries not to think about it. How many people they’ve seen come and go.

She can stay here, in her dreams. She’s not on the clock. She’s not even, technically, a counselor.

“I need a counselor!” Connor repeats forcefully, and this time she can hear it -- a woman screeching in the background, voice choked with sobs. She sits up with a start. She recognizes the voice. One of the androids she'd been helping blueprint out a house of her own.

She’s up packing, headache forgotten.

* * *

 

Emma stomps through the mid October slush in boots that barely fit her feet, pulling her thick hair behind a grey handkerchief. She squints against the biting wind, a cold that’s come entirely too early for her liking this year.

She’s not a counselor, but when you are short staffed...well, you get a woman that likes to fix things and who’s been broken before and then...you do what you can to get by. The location is close enough that she could run there, skipping her beat up purple Taurus entirely, which is why she is going at all -- or so she tells herself.

She turns around the street corner expecting a fluttering display of police lights in the twilight, but the street called out on dispatch is oddly still, she realizes, because the other backup hasn’t arrived yet. Two figures struggle in the middle of the road. She stumbles forward, picking up the pace.

“Emma?” It’s Connor, his voice remarkably calm for trying to calm a sobbing woman. His blazer -- of course he won’t let go of the aesthetic of his old outfit, even if she tricked him out of the old android shame coat -- is nearly untouched. The dissonance slips down her spine like cold coffee.

“Yea, yea, I’m coming!” she yells over the wind, fishing the Interfacer out of her Carhartt overalls. She sticks it to her head. _A flood of blue light, the smell of burning electrical tape, acid on her tongue..._

“ _Please_ do not approach unless--oof!” His head is thrown back in a spurt of blue blood as the woman, Anjali, smashes an elbow straight to his nose. Emma rushes forward.

“Anjali! It’s me! It’s Emma!”

The android woman spins at her voice, and stills in shock just long enough for Emma to seize her by the shoulders and connect.

_Another person's pictures hang on its walls. A well-cut but hollowed-out man with grey eyes, looking angrily into the cold. Two lanky boys, laughing between leaky tenement buildings of a city she’s only seen in movies. The same two boys but older, bruised with experience, looking at her, not recognizing her, pretending they didn’t know her..._

_Anjali watches them, a world away, arm outstretched, legs wrapped in mottled webs of plastic and brine, programmed makeup running in black rivulets._

_We can break out of this, Anjali. Let’s try another way, she tries to say, but she has no idea if the woman has heard over the screeching winds, thick as salt and oil and seaweed. Anjali turns, though, toward Emma, and the world shifts again…_

_Anjali and Emma, alone, snow filling her eyes, her nose, her mouth --_ _  
_ _She has to squint to keep the roiling fear at bay. Icy despair threatens to crawl between her lungs and drown her. Already, the old tendrils of panic reawaken in her gut, and she takes a sharp breath to force them back to sleep--_

_Emma!_

Emma is yanked backward, her teeth snapping together as her breath all flies out in one go. She blinks a few times, the twilight light too blue to settle right in her eyes. Two strong hands grip her shoulders and refuse to let go. She wipes her face instinctively. Dark blood comes off her fingers from beneath her nose, and she stuffs her hand back down in her pocket so Connor won’t see.

“O-okay,” she sputters out. He doesn’t let go just yet, and besides, her eyes are trained on Anjali.

“Emma,” the woman sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says instinctively. Refacing memories takes more than words. It takes an iron will capable of bending a metal rod in two. But the counselor’s corps is afraid to test the limits of the Human/Android Interfacing Technology (the HAIT devices, she notes with no small amount of amusement. Most try to pronounce it ‘height’). The delicate copper pathways of a bionic brain experience everything with a physicality humans could never understand, even if humans are the ones who gifted/cursed androids with emotionality, anyway. Kamski, who sits high as God in the clouds, had deigned the devices functional with his usual level of flippancy. Brave volunteers did the rest.

All in the name of starting human-android relations on a better foot.

Tears stream down Anjali’s face, but at least she isn’t thrashing anymore. Emma lurches forward to squeeze both her hands and she feels Connor move to match her. _Don’t_. She feels the whisper, rather than hears it.

“We can do this,” Emma says, voice injected with a steel she couldn’t afford to lose. But so it goes. She’d make up for it later. “You don’t have to blame yourself. Thoughts don’t own you. You own them. Remember?”

“I don’t know how,” Anjali heaves through sobs. “I don’t know anything else.”

The rest happens in a sort of blur. Connor pulls her back again, and someone in Counselor blue brushes past her, collecting Anjali in her arms. Talia. The woman looks back at Emma with a misty look, thin nose and mouth pinched downward, eyes too large for her face. Emma can’t orient in time to read the expression, but she can’t help but feel like she’d been summarily dismissed.

She stands side-by-side next to Connor, who observes with his usual composure after finally letting her shoulders free. Perhaps used to far off looks of disparagement, even in a new world.

“Aren’t you supposed to be off the clock?” he says softly to her, looking down at her askance.

“I am off,” she says, voice feeling a mile away from her body still. “I just decided to work on something else in my off time.”

“You’re exhausted. Why don’t you go home?”

She waves it off. Sound is returning, slowly, to normal. Talia is taking Anjali to a car. “Why don’t _you_ go home?”

“Androids don’t get--”

“Nope.” She shakes this off, too, and the corners of his mouth tilt upward. Thirium still stains his commercial-flawless skin and he functions as if unbothered, which makes her stare. She tries not to. “Don’t start.” she says. “You were supposed to be off, oh…” She looks at her chunky digital watch. “Three hours ago?”

His face flickers instantly into such conflict that she feels a pang of worry throttle her chest for a moment. “I’ve been absorbed in work,” he says, in a tone of one trying to soften a harsher blow.

“The bloody nose does give me that suspicion.”

He smirks slightly at her comment. “Your detective skills are improving, Emma.”

“Does Hank know where you are?” she presses, fishing a thick grey cloth from her overall pocket.

“He knows I’m not dead, if that’s what you mean.”

She snorts. “Clean your nose.” She hands him the cloth. He observes it a moment as if it is a strange artifact. “Is it broken?”

“You don’t need to be concerned about that.” He softly places the cloth to his face nonetheless.

“Then let’s get food or something,” she says. “You’re off now, right?”

Connor processes a moment, LED flashing yellow, and then, to her surprise, nods. It’s not usually this simple. “I can be.”

She raises an eyebrow to that. “You mean you _should_ be.”

He gives her a long look, searching and unfathomable, and she opens her mouth, ready to press the attack before he says, “Apparently I am.”

She watches him a moment but his face betrays nothing else, despite the fact that she is very sure she is being teased. She shakes her head minutely as he regards her in companionable silence.

“How kind of you,” she says. “It’s a really good thing they don’t have to pay you overtime.”

She turns to walk back toward her car. She doesn’t have to look to know he’s right behind her.

* * *

This ritual is known now at Dan’s Diner, so no one looks at them oddly, but the humans slowly returning to town likely wouldn’t give them the disparaging glances that, once upon a time, would have been commonplace. Or so she hopes.

They’re settled into the usual booth at the end of the row, nestled in a corner between two windows so that they can both have a view -- though Connor insists, usually, on taking the seat where he can watch the door. Some old part of his detective programming, probably.

She’s eating breakfast for dinner, coffee included, and he has a single black coffee in a ceramic mug that he likes to wrap his hands around. It’s practice, he told her once, but for what he did not tell her. But maybe it’s practice for this -- friendships formed on showing up, over and over, until it’s more awkward not to introduce yourself to the other than to take a chance.

She’s staring at his hands, tapping out...something...against the mug. His skin shines unusually pale under the yellowing lamp above them, and it strikes her: he reminds her of one of the fae from her old fairytale books growing up. Something from the old stories. And maybe she’s taking a risk being the friend of a fae. They’re all guided by a specific set of rules. The Winter Court is capricious and strange, selfish and damning, and even the Summer Court could treat their favored with bizarre requests...but if you treat them with kindness, they’ll bequeath you with no end of gifts. Healing and music and light. But does he know?

The metaphor gets away from her, she realizes, because he is leaning down to try and catch her gaze.

Fae are not easy to look at for long periods of time.

“Emma?”

“Just zoning out,” she says calmly, flashing a half-hearted smile. “What have you been reading?”

“Ah…” His hands go still, thinking. “I’m afraid I have not...had much time for reading outside of work.”

She stabs a few eggs. “What’s happening at work?”

He’s silent long enough that she looks up to cajole him, only to realize he is staring at her. “Raina disappeared.”

Her fork hovers in the air as her guts all flip in place. “What?”

“I know you don’t know anything about it. But I thought you might want to know.”

She puts the fork down. “She’s the latest, then?” Her voice is quiet. Connor just nods, eyes downcast. “She was...was on the verge of a breakthrough,” Emma says. “Even I could see that.”

“I have been pouring over reports, but there is no strong connection between the disappearances except that they are all androids and the latest all needed the assistance of a counselor. Or...an enterprising carpenter,” he says knowingly. Emma looks back down at her food. “So I’ve been keeping an eye on when such...breakdowns are reported. And they are increasingly common as of late.”

She sips her coffee and winces at its heat. She’d noticed it too, that more of such calls were coming over the radio. Was it some sort of coincidence? The anniversary of the Battle for Detroit was coming close -- was a year long enough for ennui to set in?

“Any ideas for motive?” she asks.

“None.”

She chews on sausage gristle, thinking. He continues the tapping on the mug.

“You’re really on edge about this,” she says. The words are already out when she realizes how stupid that sounds. Of course he would be on edge about it. The first real android detective without a handler (a real prototype of a situation) had to make a good impression -- besides the fact that it was utterly in his nature to dive in headfirst.

If Connor agrees with her self-assessment, he doesn’t say it. “I have to be,” he says after a moment.

“Well,” she says, “no use wasting energy worrying right now. Just enjoy the ambiance with me, all right?” She gestures around her with the coffee mug. “Beautiful Dan’s.”

He tilts his head, watching her -- his fae look again. She finds it impossible to meet his eyes.

“Interesting turn of phrase,” he says thoughtfully. “If you hadn’t come, we wouldn’t even be here.”

She furrows her brow. Ah, the classic Connor pounce. She wonders if they are gonna have that fight again, about why she’s willing to help the counselors, about the fact that there’s a shortage of volunteers these days, or the fact that her having been in a lot of therapy isn’t the same as being trained to do it. But instead he just asks: “So when are you going to tell Hank you are the one that took his at-home dispatch radio?”

She chokes on her eggs, and coughs a little. Connor’s eyes widen.

“Whaddya mean?” she sputters out, dabbing at her face with a napkin.

After he seems satisfied that she isn’t about to asphyxiate, he focuses on adjusting his sleeves. “You really should not have an Interfacer, either. I’ve considered confiscating it, but I know it’d upset you.”

“Yes,” she says flatly, leveling him with a stare. “And you’d miss me running after you out there.”

His face flashes through a number of expressions that, in any other conversation, would make her laugh. Offended, amenable, embarrassed. He presses on. “But you aren’t trained. And we don’t know what the long-term ramifications are of their use.”

“Bet you haven’t said that to any of the trained counselors.” He opens his mouth and she raises her fork. “I signed all the waivers or whatever that they signed.” That’s not protocol anymore, she’ll admit, but the early days of the Corps were...messy.

He closes his mouth again for a moment. “I’m just concerned,” is what he settles with. “You haven’t been sleeping. That coffee won’t help.”

Her heart jolts, and she trains her eyes resolutely onto her coffee, which spins lazily in the mug. “Eh,” she says, with enforced nonchalance. “I think I’m resistant now.” At least he didn’t try to stop her from ordering it. Hank’s influence was good for something. “Tiredness kinda comes with the gig I signed up for, Con. I’m kind of shocked you aren’t feeling it, yourself.”

Something in his expression changes subtly -- his eyes soften, his mouth relaxes -- and she wonders, for a moment, if maybe he is.

“Life’s that way,” she adds quietly.

He leans toward her slightly. Just so slightly, but nothing he does is without purpose. “Is it?”

She stares at his forehead, calculating.

“Sometimes.” She looks to her plate. Empty. Something in her bones shifts, and she wants to be gone -- out of there. Something sad and high-strung clings to Connor like moss, and her head pounds. She’s out of energy to peel it away, but she will if she stays. She will until she’s asleep right there on the table, and she’s not sure he’d find that helpful.

He just keeps watching her, so she takes the dispatcher radio out of her bag and waves it at him. “Hank has like three of these things lying around anyway. He loves old shit like this.” She takes another loving glance at the old brick radio. “You want it back before I go?”

He taps the table a few times. She spots the coin in his hand. When did that get there?

“You can keep it,” he decides after a time, surprising her. “Would you like accompaniment to your car?”

I can walk to the parking lot, she thinks to say, but then she remembers that she left it a ways a way, back at the old theater, and from here that is actually a bit of a walk. She eyes the gun in her bag, but she’d rather not find reason to use it tonight. Relief settles in her ribs and she resolutely ignores it.

“If it’ll make ya happy.” She tries to say it nonchalantly, but she’s not sure it comes out right.

He relaxes suddenly. It strikes her, then, that he was holding his breath. “It would.”

He smiles, and it’s like she’s blinded by blue light all over again. 


	2. from the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor read somewhere that 3 a.m. is “the magic hour” -- a concept still out of his purview. But the wide open dark gives him a feeling without a name; if it is all an illusion, as he’s wondered, it’s started pulling new tricks.
> 
> It feels like there’s a hole in one of his key biocomponents, slowly leaking. Like thirium could pool in the bottom of his abdomen, and no one would know until it’s too late.

 [...RECHARGING…]

[...RECHARGING…]

[...100%]

[ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL. VISUAL FEED NORMAL. TIME: 3:09 A.M]

_‘Yea, the diplomats are doing their thing.’ Hank, eating a burger. ‘But they aren’t here with us. Doing the work on the ground, you know? It’s never gonna be...quite the same.’_

_‘Here with us.’_

_‘Life’s that way.’_

_‘You’d miss me.’_

[RUNNING DIAGNOSTIC…..ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL.]

Androids do not dream. Connor understands this. But the thoughts circle, endlessly. He processes and scans the color, texture, and sound of his memories until they are a grainy nonsense of variables that shouldn’t be there. Voices stop sounding right. Freckles are in the wrong place. Lips are the wrong size. The recollection is perfect; his sensor scans are absolutely complete.

The wrongness persists.

[ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL.]

He opens his eyes. Moonlight and the white glare of streetlamps shine through the dusty windows of Hank’s spare room (“You live here, you live like a civilized human man. Android man. Fuck it, you know what I mean.”). Sumo snores softly in the hallway and his owner snores louder still in the bedroom across the way. All things normal.

_Don’t tell me you were working this whole time._

_I was at Dan’s._

_A smile, and a strange look in Hank’s eye -- uncategorizable. No statements of clarification. Continues to watch television._

Connor could get up and work. Read one of the books Hank suggested. But the thoughts spin on, so _many_ of them, and he’s not sure he’s willing to leave them be.

_She’s interfacing again. Stress level: 55%. Monitor your life signs._

_Incorrect prioritization. Monitor her life signs._

_Mouth open, face uncharacteristically inexpressive. Eyes (dark brown -- dark dark brown, where do they go?) out of focus. Extremely minor shivering._

_Why?_

His eyes fly open and he focuses again on the chilling brightness of the moon, if only to stop this thought cycle before it can begin. The street is silent. He read somewhere that 3 a.m. is “the magic hour” -- a concept still out of his purview. But the wide open dark of the sky gives him a feeling without a name; if it is all an illusion, as he’s wondered, it’s started pulling new tricks.

It feels like there’s a hole in one of his key biocomponents, slowly leaking. Like thirium could pool in the bottom of his abdomen, and no one would know until it’s too late.

[TIME: 3:15 A.M.]

* * *

Emma steps out of the client’s house, wiping sweat and grit off her forehead with the back of her glove. Clouds obscure the weakly setting sun, casting the neighborhood in a downcast gray. Materials she’d need for tomorrow’s drywall installation cycled through her head, hammering out all curious thought. A litany of the most boring items imaginable.

Nothing like exhaustion to beat the worry out of you.

Sleep or stagework? She hesitated outside her Taurus, testing the tires with her boot. If she had to ask, maybe she should just go home...

Her phone softly chimes.

 _Who could possibly want to call me_ now _?_

She digs it out of her thick coat with a furrowed brow, suppressing a sigh. The number was “unknown,” but that was hardly unusual in her line of work. Androids were buying their own phones, but the savvy ones were understandably wary of tracking.

She clicks it over. “Emma Ibori.”

“Emma. Are you free?”

She blinks at the voice on the line. “Speaker Markus?” Well, that explains the blocked number. “...how’d you get my number?”

“It’s in the Corps files,” he says. “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.” His voice is warm but straightforward, plodding along pleasantries as if by rote.

She raises a brow in interest, but her gut sinks. The leader of the preliminary Android government probably didn’t just call people to chat. “Sure, no. What can I do for you?”

* * *

Hank taps his empty coffee cup on his desk and stares at Connor. He checks his watch...he’s been staring for a good three minutes now. Connor doesn’t even seem to notice.

Hank leans back in his chair, making it creak, and sighs heavily.

“I think we’re off the clock,” he finally says.

Connor is staring at his computer like he’s Atlas, holding the world up. His brow is furrowed as he scans through files that Hank knows too well will reveal nothing new, not even to a top of the line prototype detective. Connor has a single hand on his forehead, fingers reaching up through his hair -- a curious gesture of humanity that makes him seem much younger than he pretends to be, even if he is still sitting up ramrod straight.

“You can go home if you want,” Connor says politely. His eyes don’t leave the screen.

Hank frowns. He’s too well-worn to know how to break through the miasma gathering around the young man. He just tries to be there.

Tough being a prototype.

A rough guitar riff plays -- Hank’s phone. He pulls it out of his pocket and stares at the number. _An opportunity._

“Anderson.”

“Hey, it’s Emma. Does Connor have a direct line to Markus, you think?”

“Emma, I'm at work.”

Lo and behold, Connor _finally_ looks his way. Hank stifles a smirk at Connor’s attempt to make it look nonchalant by casting his gaze lazily to the side a moment, but Hank doesn’t buy it for a second. They had to get Connor his own phone soon.

“I got a weird call from him. He said he had a job opportunity come up at the old East Yard Elementary for me but, uh...the number he used won’t work.” He can hear the wind crackle through her phone speaker.

“ _Markus_ called you?”

“Maybe.” He can hear her shuffling with a door. “One reason I wanted to confirm with him. I’d just demo this place.”

Hank leans forward. Connor does too. Hank gives him a look -- _eavesdropping is rude, how many times do I gotta tell you that?_ \-- but his detective instinct yammers like a mad dog. “Go back to your car.”

A long pause. “...all right then.” He can hear her breathing as she begins to walk. “I didn’t go in far.”

“You really shouldn’t be on that side of town,” he says quietly. “Are you alone?”

She doesn’t answer. His gut clenches. The girl was tough, a wicked good contractor who’d fixed up a number of things in his old house, and a presence that flitted in and out like a fly he couldn’t chase away. But she, like a lot of the youth around these parts, was both too stubborn and too trusting. Connor was nearly out of his seat trying to listen in now, dark eyes intent upon Hank, all pretense gone.

“I have a gun.”

“Emma--”

“Look, can you just ask Con if--”

A loud, unmistakable bang.

“Emma?” He pulled his phone back and looked at the call connection.

The line was instantly dead.

“Oh, _fuck_. Connor--”

Connor was already running full speed toward the exit. Hank grabs his radio and follows, fast as he dares.

“Dispatch, we have a situation. Door! Connor, _use the door_!”

* * *

Emma’s ears ring. Fear blooms in her stomach like an orchid. In a thoughtless moment, she reaches up to touch her ear to check for bleeding, but her hand is embedded with glass and already slick so it’s useless. She can feel the blood trickling down her jaw. It’ll probably stain her coat, she realizes with a bizarre amusement.

All she can really think about is running, away from her car where they'd ambushed her, zigging and zagging between vehicles, between houses, through any path that could break up their beeline on her. She expects them to shoot again at any moment -- a thought that keens bright as lightning. But they don’t, despite the fact that they had the wherewithal to shoot her phone from her hand.

What was stopping them?

She chances a look back. Two figures in nondescript dark clothes chase her with stocky, athletic movements and a uniformity that felt too exact to be human.

Fear bottoms her out. All her breaths feel like flame.

Her bag drags down on her shoulder, even as she tries to keep it from smacking her side too much with her left hand. But it’s no use. It’s slowing her down and they clearly aren’t tiring. While she hears sirens wailing in the distance, she decides to buy time by -- _God and Universe please fucking forgive me, I’m never gonna be able to buy tools again at this rate_ \-- throwing the bag as far as she can at her pursuers.

But not without grabbing her gun first.

* * *

“It was a mistake to let you drive!” Hank wheezes, but Connor knows the man can’t mean it. At the speed they are going, only an android could have prevented their untimely death via crash.

[FIND EMMA FIND EMMA FIND EMMA FIND EMMA]

Text flashes red in his eyes, constant, and he blinks hard to try and erase it. There is no erasing it.

[CIRCULATION ELEVATED. RECOMMEND DEEP BREATHS FOR SYSTEM COOLING.]

The dispatch chatter was up. Connor only slowed when he saw the flashing lights of other patrol cars in the distance, parked on some abandoned street where single-family housing met the blockier apartment units of inner Detroit. Police were exiting their cars, guns up.

He nearly slams the car into park. Hank grumbles something obscene but they both near tumble out of the car. They bolt toward what the other police are examining.

_A bag…_

Instantly, he enters analysis mode, the mind palace thrumming to life. _Contents spilled out of the bag as if it was thrown for distraction. A measuring tape and a Laserlite level flung a few feet out of the bag from the force of the toss. One hammer, a smattering of nails and screwdrivers [multiple head types] are scattered on the pavement in an arc akin to spraying water._

_Specks of fresh blood._

[MISSION: FIND EMMA.]

_She loves this bag._

[PROCESSING: PROJECTING RUN BASED ON BAG LOCATION, THROWN ITEM DISTANCE, EAST YARD SCHOOL.]

“Connor, we’re going to find her, you just gotta--”

[RE-CONSTRUCTING]

“--take a second to breathe--”

[POSSIBLE DIRECTION: NORTHWEST?]

“--listening?”

Connor can hear Hank saying something in the background, but his processors burn too hot. He has a mission to do. He doesn’t have time for anything but analysis--

Two gunshots, 467 feet northwest.

His mission parameters squeeze his chest. Something lances his core biocomponent.

[DIAGNOSTIC UNDERWAY.]

He runs, fast as his feet will go, but the neighborhood is starting to blur around him. He leaves the other officers in the dust, not weighed down by patrol gear or a biological need for aerobic exercise. He vaults over parked cars and old trash bins and rounds the corner of an alleyway--

[RECONSTRUCTING PRECONSTRUCTING RECON--]

Two dead bodies litter the ground.

[THIRIUM -&*^&*CORRUPTION.]

_What?_

And Emma stands at the alley’s end, gun outstretched.

He stumbles to a stop at the sight. His entire vision shakes a moment.

Blood stains the side of her face, and one of her hands claws unnaturally around the gun, clearly injured. She stands with feet shoulder-width apart, arms straight. A near perfect shooting stance. One pursuer was downed with a shot to the head, the other with a shot to the chest. Executioner style.

Something hot burns in Connor’s ribcage. She had been cornered. A chainlink fence blocks the alleyway behind her.

She suddenly takes in a sharp breath.

“Emma!” The word feels torn from him as he skitters across the alley. Now he can see she’s close to tears, teeth barred, breath coming in shaky waves. “You’re all right,” he says, hands up. The softness of his voice comes at a shock considering the magma filling his midsection. “You’re safe now.”

[MISSION SUCCESS]

She takes in another sharp, shaky breath and the tears finally roll down her face. Her whole body near vibrates with stress. He moves until he is close enough that he can whisper.

“Give me the gun,” he says softly.

“No.”

His chest compresses further. “Please. You are not in a state to hold a weapon.”

Even if her shots were perfect.

She hesitates, but then thrusts the gun into his palm with her good hand -- much to his surprise. He sticks it in his extra holster on his waistband and then leans down slightly to level with her gaze. Without thinking, he tentatively rests his hands on her shoulders. His fingers wrap around her shoulders and his palms settle against her collarbones. Only then does it feel like she’s real.

 _Alive alive alive alive_.

He scans her face, unwilling to miss a single detail. A gunshot wound to her right ear. Thick, coiled hair caking against the sticky blood. Scratches along her jawline from glass shards. Old smears of makeup under her eyes, now just black specks thanks to time and tears. But the constellation is still there -- a single smear of blood disrupting the map of freckles on her face…

“Connor!” Hank and the other police finally arrive, feet loud against the pavement. “Shit...”

Connor doesn’t turn to look back at them. He’s watching Emma’s dark brown eyes, waiting. Waiting. She stares at the middle distance between them, as if rebooting -- until suddenly she blinks and she isn’t. She’s looking right back at him. Searching his face.

“I’m--” A hiccup disrupts her sentence and she takes in another rough, shaky breath.

Another lance through his core biocomponent. He suddenly can’t bring himself to say anything at all. Something in him rumbles and roars -- a creature that he’d not witnessed since he broke the command to Stop Markus.

“Emma, hey, it’s gonna be alright.” That was Hank, breathing hard.

“Wh...why the _fuck_ were they chasing me?” Emma looks between Connor and Hank, breaking eye contact finally. “They were by Tulio.” Her car.

“We’ll figure it out,” Hank says, stepping up next to them. He taps Connor’s shoulder once, a signal to move. Connor’s systems feel sluggish; he finds he doesn’t want to let go. But after a moment, he takes a step back, releasing her shoulders.

Hank places his scarf around her neck. “You said you could shoot but you never said you were a goddamn Olympian.”

She squints, looking away. “I dunno.” She gestures outward. “Got lucky, I guess.”

_Luck?_

Two programs go to war.

_Analyze the variables: Markus’s involvement. Did someone use his voice? The supposed job. How did they obtain her number? Why did they chase but opt not to shoot her again? How did they find her? What did they want? Who are these androids and what was their purpose? Why was the reading of the blue blood returning corrupted data? Why is she shy about her gunshots? Find more information. Solve this now._

_If you look away from her something else might happen you never know there are no proper odds for this anymore not in this city where nothing has a precondition another shooter could appear anything could come out of thin air so keep your eyes on her at all times don’t you dare let her leave your sight how did she shoot them like that was it luck was it just luck that left her alive was it just luck that she’s here at all--_

“Connor?”

Emma is staring at him, moisture on her face glinting blue and red as the last of the backup arrives.

“He’s fine,” Hank says with his usual gruffness, placing a hand on her shoulder as if to turn her away. “Owes me some new tires. Drives like a maniac.” His tone is heightened. He’s trying to obfuscate something, but Emma doesn’t break her stare. Hank bites his lip, concerned.

Connor looks down. The pavement flashes red. He tucks one hand behind his back, as if that can stop the feeling building inside, and another to the coin in his pocket.

_What if what if what if what if?_

[DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE. ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING.]

But that can’t be right. Because his vision is blurring -- breaking into prisms of light as all the magma in his chest finally reaches his optical components.

He turns away so Emma won’t see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s not a lot of information on how androids are ‘charged’ or if they even need to be. They run on batteries and do seem to undergo dormant status at some point so I’m just guessing they have some sort of self-recharge ability that activates in time of low activity, like night.
> 
> Tl;dr Androids sleep, I guess! Kind of!
> 
> P.S. completely forgot the first hostage’s name was also Emma, so...whoops? Slip of the...fate? Dunno, sorry lmao


	3. of fragile dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I'm glad you are here,” he finally says. “I'm glad it wasn't the alternative.”
> 
> Heat spikes in her spine. His voice isn’t loud, but its intensity fills the room. A vapor pressing against her skin like warm breath. She stares at his fidgeting hands. Which alternative?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who has commented, left kudos or read :) been doing a lot of outlining on this so hopefully updates will be fairly consistent!
> 
> discussions of anxiety ahead, so a headsup if that's a little too #relatable for you (as it is something I feel keenly in my own life, too)

Hank hates hospitals. The chalky, fluorescent light makes his skin crawl. The chattering junkies, the sobbing husbands and wives, the harried nurses snapping at each other -- it’s too much hell for one damn building. It may be the worst possible place for Connor to experience his latest Fucking Mysterious Emotion, but like most crapshoot things in life, Connor didn’t get a hand in choosing it (and neither, frankly, did Hank).

Still. He can’t exactly leave the kids to deal with this all on their own. He and Connor have a job to do, after all.

Emma sits silently, boot heels digging into the examination table. An android nurse softly dabs at the wounds on her jaw. Hank and Connor sit in uncomfortable, plastic chairs off to the side as the nurse pointedly puts herself between Emma and the detectives, prompting frustrated jolts of movement from his android partner.

“Just sit still. Whatdya think is going to happen?” Hank hisses.

Connor stares at the back of the nurse, messing with his coin. “I don’t know.” _That’s the problem_ , his tone implies.

But Hank and Connor do their due diligence, because Emma’s made it clear she “just wants it over with.” They take down her statement (“I was called out to some weird ass place on the east side and got ganked by some fucking weirdos”), swab for ballistics and DNA, and schedule a time for an interview. She says as little as possible. Hank can’t blame her.

They’re nearly to Hank’s car before Emma says anything unprompted.

“I don’t want to go back to my house,” she says, not looking at either of them. Her voice has that muted quality of one trying not to cry. “So we can just go back to the station or whatever.”

Connor’s hands, which are rubbing together in that nervous way he does, freeze in the air. “There are not many comfortable areas to sleep there.”

Emma shrugs. She rubs her arms. She pointedly doesn’t look at either of them. _Something’s eating at her. And not just the fact that she was almost shot._

“You’re not a criminal,” Hank says pointedly. “I’m not bringing you to the station.”

Connor’s face is unreadable but his eyes are trained on Emma. Hank has that old sinking feeling in his chest that signals he is about to do something absolutely dumb as hell.

“We probably have room for you,” Hank says.

Emma finally looks at him, eyes sharp. The woman isn’t stupid. “Really?”

“Yes,” Connor says before Hank can respond. “My room is available to you.”

Emma turns to him slowly, as if the words are reaching her from across a far distance.

“I don’t require a bed,” Connor says as unhelpful explanation.

Hank rubs his forehead with his palms. “One of us can take the couch. Take the offer or leave it.”

She closes her eyes for a long moment. “Fine,” she says, so quiet he barely hears it.

Connor gives him a look -- the minorest of smirks. But as Hank watches his partner’s shoulders relax for the first time all evening, he remembers why he does dumb things like this in the first place.

* * *

Hank’s house is more lively tonight than it has been in months, but that isn’t saying much when the audience is a dog, a perturbed android and a woman who’d been shot. Emma plods off to Connor’s room clinging to a pile of clean clothes that Hank scrounged up for her with little more than a ‘thanks,’ and Connor sits primly on the couch, watching her as she goes.

Hank sighs.

He’s not blind. Something about her makes Connor act like a lost boy from Neverland. Hank doesn’t know everything about their friendship -- he doesn’t really ask, because its not his business -- but he knows it at least exists, in some form. Tonight proved that. Which is more than he could say about Connor’s relationships with most people.

Revolutions are slower than they appear. And Connor was a...strange case.

“Talk to me,” Hank says, throwing his coat on one of the dining chairs. “You’ll short out or something.”

Only once Emma closes the bedroom door does Connor take off his tie with a sharp _whap_. “This case isn’t over,” he says. “Don’t let Fowler tell you it is.” He leans over his knees and places his head in his hands -- a split second loss of control.

He may be an android, and thus preternaturally good looking. But he looks like hell.

“You were scared,” Hank explains flatly. “It’s one thing to stare your own death in the face. It’s another when its…”

He doesn’t finish that sentence.

“Well, it drove me to drink,” he says instead.

Connor leans back against the sofa, head slowly tilting until he’s looking at the ceiling. Hank sighs. He knows too well that Connor won’t find the answers he’s looking for up there.

* * *

Emma flings her arms out against the cool sheets, eyes closed against the roiling storm in her gut. The anxiety stretches out like a claw from her pelvis to her ribs, squeezing.

There will be no sleeping tonight. There wouldn’t be sleeping even if she wasn’t in Connor’s bed (weird), alone (not unusual), watching the shadows of the electrical lines dance against the curtains (creepy). For once, she’s not alone in the house -- but it’s just not enough.

None of her tools are working. The deep breaths, the thought breakers. She tried Aikido stances earlier and that helped until she got back into bed, where the anxiety pounced as soon as she wrapped herself up in his stiff sheets. _Just get through this moment. Just breathe through this moment. You will survive this. You can survive this. What’s the worst that could happen?_

But she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. She thinks of Connor’s face in the alleyway and she has no fucking clue how she could survive the worst that might have happened. It's like trying to rein in a monster that'd been deprived of food for too long. She's lost control, and there is no getting it back in the cage.

So she rolls out of bed again, swinging her feet to the floor, and walks quietly as she can to the door. She opens it slowly. Blue light from the TV spills into the hall and Sumo huffs unbothered in his sleep outside her and Hank’s rooms.

Would Connor be in low-power mode yet? Android sleep? Zoning out? He explained it once, but he seemed vaguely embarrassed by it at the time so she didn’t press. But even his persistent questioning would be better than languishing in this semi-sleep nightmarescape all alone, so she takes the chance.

Naturally, he is sitting up on the couch, alert as if the sun was out, facing the TV. He is looking down slightly, so there was likely a book or something in his lap. For a strange, beautiful moment, he doesn’t seem to notice her at all.

She openly observes the back of his head -- hair perfectly kept, except at the top. Collar wrinkled, coat slightly askew...

He tilts his head slightly and she does so as well to match him, curious.

_What does he think about, all alone late at night?_

His LED spins from blue to yellow to red before she can move and he whips around with unnatural speed. Their eyes meet; it reminds her of an icicle slipping from the roof. Something cracks between them. She nearly jumps back at its power.

But then she remembers what she’s wearing.

Emma has on a navy t-shirt that says ‘I DON’T TRIP I TEST GRAVITY’ and sky blue sweats that are tied as tight as possible around her natural waist. Her shoulders are at once too broad while her arms are too short, putting the t-shirt seams in strange places. The pants are tight around her butt but drape like curtains to the ground. Another shirt ties her coily hair up. She looks like a laundry pile that’s gained sentience.

In fairness, she’s never seen him so disheveled before. His tie is gone, his shirt is unbuttoned part of the way and his blazer is rumpled. He also looks good, still, because he’s a fucking android. _God, disappearing would be better than this._

“Do you really sleep like that?” she blurts.

He looks like a deer ambushed in the night. “Can you...rephrase?”

“Do you sleep in those clothes?” She nearly winces at the bitterness in her voice. “Just like that?”

“No,” he says too quickly. His eyes dart to the side, as if caught in a lie. “I don't…really sleep in the traditional sense…”

She bites her lip (annoyed that she's amused) and lets the moment pass, hoping he leaves it be. She mutters about needing air (thinking, unfortunately, of the casual wear she _knows_ Hank must have forced upon him) as she shoves her feet into boots.

“I would not recommend going outside…”

She pushes out to the front yard, into the wind and snow showers just to feel it on her skin. Of course, he doesn't leave it be, which she's grateful for.

It’s a real bitch of a situation.

He follows out at a respectful distance. His presence is like a bloom of light, impossible to miss in the corner of her eye. “Your life signs are clearly elevated,” he says quietly. She can see him turn more directly toward her in realization. “You feel unsafe.”

His tone signals deep confusion.

She isn’t in the mood to explain how her brain remains convinced that danger is around every corner and has worked that way since as long as she can remember. She has a danger sense that won’t shut the fuck up. _A young girl cowers in the bedroom closet as the storm rattles her windows. The fear, illogical, possesses body and spirit, uncontested._

She crosses her arms and stares at the ground. The cold is sharp and real, defanging the sharp coils working through her body.

“I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin,” she says, a little more truthfully than she’d like. “It just happens, sometimes.”

She expects him to ask what he can do to help, and she’s ready to say _nothing_ because there is nothing. No one can make her brain stop malfunctioning except herself and maybe the meds she ran out of prescription for years ago. It’s a singularly individual war with a battlefield well-beaten from engagement.

He puts his thin coat over her shoulders. He stands there in a thin white shirt, unbothered.

“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” he asks quietly. She can feel his eyes on her cheekbones, watching.

She covers her face a moment as if rubbing warmth back into it, but mostly to hide her surprise at the question. Deep breaths. “My dad.” She lets her hands flop back down to her thighs. “I dunno. It always came natural. I was eight years old shootin’ cans off of stumps.”

He stares out into the night with her. It's a good thing no one is out tonight. What a sight they likely make. “Is this a normal thing to teach a young child?”

“It is in the Midwest.”

He adjusts his sleeves nervously as he moves closer, angling himself to block the worst of the wind from her. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up bad memories.”

She looks up to the sky -- clouded and starless -- and shivers hard. “Not bad.” She lets the silence linger a moment. Lets herself miss her father. “I dunno, I just…I can't shake the feeling like something is catching up.” She wraps her arms around her middle. “I know it's stupid.”

It's the same tectonic plate, the same force wave that followed her parents’ deaths. She’s tipped over into something and there’s no stopping the tsunami now. That's what it feels like. Running from a shadow that looms so large it's unfathomable.

Moving from town to town…she hadn't thought of it in so long, how commonplace it was until suddenly it wasn't. She'd been in Michigan, at least, for over 7 years now. And then this happens. Maybe she’s just cursed.

But Kid Emma would have killed for a tenure of that longevity. For a chance to make friends like...

“You say you were lucky,” Connor says, and something about his tone makes her shift her gaze toward him. “I don't like to rely on luck or coincidences, and there are…too much of both.”

She gives a small nod at that. She lets her eyes linger on his face.

“You’re conflicted,” she observes.

“You’re the first person that hasn’t successfully disappeared.” He looks to her boots. “I’d rather you not be embroiled in this investigation at all.”

“You and me both.” She smiles a little bit to ease the blow. He frowns; the joke didn’t land, so she presses on. “Don’t change your entire workflow because of me. You have to do what you have to do to stop this shit.”

His LED spins yellow and red and back again as he stares at her in silence. She turns away and gives him time to process. She shivers so hard her jaw aches.

“You’ll soon experience symptoms of hypothermia if you don’t go inside.”

She sighs. “Yeah.”

He moves to open the door to the house, looking to her expectantly. She rolls her eyes dramatically but she follows the unspoken command.

The living room is blessedly warm. The monster in her gut finally starts to let go as she kicks off her boots. She turns to say something to Connor, something sassy maybe so he knows she isn’t completely cowed, but she’s shocked into silence when she nearly runs right into him. He’s watching her, unreadable.

“Are you okay?” She asks him instead.

“I’m not the one that was injured today.”

“ _Con_.”

He blinks a few times, like he’s getting a call. She’s grown attached to the way he responds to the nickname, like he’s suddenly come into possession of a strange secret -- but he doesn’t say anything.

She turns away before the thrumming in her head turns her blind.

Instead, Emma settles into the far end of the couch, picking up the book that he may have been looking at before. Some old sci-fi book, from the looks of it. _Ender’s Game_. She flips through the well-worn pages, curious -- pointedly not looking at him as he finally sits down.

“I'm glad you are here,” he finally says. “I'm glad it wasn't the alternative.”

Heat spikes in her spine. His voice isn’t loud, but its intensity fills the room. A vapor pressing against her skin like warm breath. She stares at his fidgeting hands. _Which alternative?_ Maybe she isn’t the only person in this house kept awake, in a sense, by what had happened today. It feels too big to wrap your head around alone.

“Living is good when you got it.” She glances up to his face. He’s staring in that way again, like he’s trying to write the vague nature of memory into code.

He looks so painfully serious that she smiles to try and break it up.

“So what do you do out here at 3 a.m.?” she asks. “Read? Brood moodily?”

His face flickers from shock into the approximation of a smirk. “I read, sometimes. Work on cases. Watch whatever is on.”

She glances at the news channel running silently on Hank’s set. Nothing good, as usual.

“I have an idea,” she says, just as the idea forms. If she says it now, maybe she won’t get spooked enough to reject it outright. “How about I read this book to you? Have you gotten very far?”

He tilts his head in thought, eyes dancing away. “I couldn’t bring myself to start it.”

Her heart clenches a little. “Maybe it’ll be really boring and we’ll both fall into sleep mode. Or maybe it’ll be cool and we’ll stay up all night anyway. What have we got to lose at this point?”

Connor freezes in place, as he often does when processing something complex. His LED spins red as blood and her face burns brightly in turn.

God, her stupid human brain just lets ideas spill out all over the place, doesn’t it? She’s living on a lark but of course he can’t.

“I didn’t mean to--”

“Please stay,” he blurts out suddenly. “I’d like to hear you read it.”

Fear warms over and settles in her bones as relief.

* * *

Hank steps out of his room in the morning and is stunned into silence by the sight.

Emma is on the couch, clearly asleep. She breathes slowly, head and shoulders slumped against a pillow propped up on Connor’s torso, book on her lap with the spine pointing up. _Just let me close my eyes a minute_. Connor’s jacket is on her shoulder. And Connor sits up with his head tilted slightly to the opposite side that Emma is leaning upon, LED blinking blue -- the tell-tale sign of low-power mode.

_Well...shit._

Hank slams the door to the bathroom just a little louder than usual to try and spare them the embarrassment.


	4. when memory strikes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t normally approve of Markus’s requests,” Connor says, pushing through the blocks forming in his vocal processors.
> 
> “I'm going to have to eventually. Thought this might not be the worst one.” Fowler leans back in his chair. “He’s pretty intent this time. And someone’s gonna have to explain to that woman why her life’s about to get flipped around for a while.”
> 
> Connor stares at Fowler’s desk, grappling with a wave of what humans would likely call nausea. Maybe anxiety. Pain. Uncertainty was not written into his original protocols. The feeling wracks him with such wrongness that he wants, for the first time in his life, to lie down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wouldn’t say I’m a Gavin apologist. The dude is an unrepentant dick in the game. But since it is a game, he’s clearly just a mechanic there. Since we’re telling a different story here that doesn’t require you to Press X to Fight, I decided to take a more complicated approach to the kind of person he is. Mostly because I didn’t want to introduce a totally different character, and this one brings interesting weight to Connor interactions.
> 
> tl;dr this might be the Gavin is Actually Good At His Job Despite Everything AU depending on your interpretation, but such as it is. And a lot of plot set-up. 
> 
> If you can forgive me this, the next chapters should be more about our favorite android boi!

Emma flops into Connor’s desk chair with a dramatic sigh, letting it roll back a few inches. Connor hands her a steaming cup of coffee without a word. She opens an eye to look at him.

“I'm all right. I'll just close my eyes a few minutes.”

His mouth tilts downward but he doesn’t say anything. _He doesn’t believe me_. And maybe he shouldn’t. Her hand hurts like a bitch, the bandage on her head itches like crazy, and she feels the warm pricking behind her eyes that signals a migraine soon to sprout right here in the too-brightly lit halls of the Detroit Police Department. She looks across Connor’s terminal, at his preternaturally clean environs, and distracts her thoughts by putting herself in his shoes, if only for a moment.

_Hank’s desk sure is a shithole. Pictures everywhere, scraps of paper, dog hair, old food stains..._

Her desk would look similarly, she admits in the same thought.

But when she looks down at Connor’s desk, she begins to see quirks breaking through. A business card from Dan’s Diner. A neatly folded knit cap. A simple, chrome-lined digital photo frame Hank must have gotten him, showing a picture of Connor with Sumo. He's standing up straight next to the floppy St. Bernard.

Hank pats her on the shoulder, shocking her out of her thoughts. “You got a long day ahead.”

“Tell me about it,” she mutters.

She watches them walk into their boss’s office and then turns her chair away with another sigh.

* * *

Connor follows Hank into Captain Fowler’s office by habit. Even now, he would prefer not to be in the frontline of Fowler’s viciously exacting glares -- and Fowler is, without fail, always glaring about something.

The captain is looking over the digital file, eyes squinting from tired folds. Hank settles into the chair in front of the desk. It squeaks loudly in protest. Connor moves to stand behind him, arms clasped tightly behind his own back, pointedly ignoring the blinking red light in the corner of his vision.

[DANGER DETECTED]

He has no idea what it could mean.

Fowler looks over the file and sighs loudly. “There’s a lot of weird shit in this case,” he admits. Hank grunts in assent.

“I am beginning to sense a pattern at work,” Connor volunteers. “The last android to disappear had been interfaced with by Em--Miss Ibori.”

Fowler looks up at him and the [DANGER] signal blinks harder. The captain casts his eyes out the window and then back at Connor. Connor follows his gaze -- it lands on Emma, sitting with her back turned to the window, slumped in his desk chair, tapping her foot to some unknown beat.

“Reed will do the interview,” Fowler says.

[DANGER DETECTED!!]

Connor breaks immediately from his tense, professional stance as if Fowler had just thrown something at him. “ _What?_ ” Connor looks to Hank to appeal the decision but Hank reveals nothing; he sits in the chair, head slightly downcast. “This is our case!” Connor presses.

“We’re too close to the problem,” Hank says.

_What does that even mean? How can you be too close to a problem?_

“Conflict of interest,” Hank explains after Connor stares silently at him for a long moment. “You aren’t going to be objective enough.”

“I am an--”

[LIE DETECTED]

But Connor shuts his mouth before he finishes the sentence. _I am an android. I don’t get subjective,_ is what he wants to say, but he can’t even start the statement without seeing that text appear in his vision. He purses his lips and casts his eyes to the floor to control the frightening, sudden fury building where his lung-adjacent components reside.

Everything is different now, of course. The reminders are constant, even if it has been months.

“More to the point,” Fowler says, words a whip against any attempted insubordination, “you two were on the scene last night and a third-party perspective might ask the questions we need answered. Especially if you think she’ll talk to you on a normal basis.” He raises a hand when Connor opens his mouth to comment. “Is that understood?”

Connor’s jaw tightens. For a moment he considers wielding his title as police liaison to Markus in order to force the issue. But Hank is staring at him expectantly -- the face he makes when Connor is on the verge of doing something stupid.

“Yes, sir,” he mutters.

“I have some calls to make. We’ll revisit after the interview,” Fowler says. “ _After.”_

* * *

Emma lets Connor close the door behind her, but she feels like she just walked into a trap.

It’s not an interrogation room, but only in that she’s not handcuffed and it has furniture that doesn’t look picked up from prison. The walls are a soft green and the floor is the same simple tile present throughout the station. A single window brings in flimsy Detroit sunshine. The whole room seems a relic from an older department, largely forgotten.

Emma sits in the faux plush chair (like you’d find in a doctor’s office -- far less comfortable than it looks) at the simple, dark wood table and settles in for more waiting. That’s apparently all she’s been called to do today. It gives her far too much time with her own thoughts.

Like all these errant thoughts about how angry Connor was when he dropped her off here. The way his shoulders tensed. The coldness in his dark eyes, glaring at an enemy she couldn’t see. The installed formality that felt distant as another star.

_What’s eating you?_

_Nothing is wrong, Miss Ibori. Just this way._

She rubs her goosebumpy arms as she looks around. No obvious mirrors. Dust motes swirl plaintively in the grey light coming in from the window. But hints of this room’s past slowly come to light. The table wood is deeply scratched in some areas, as if from a pen or pencil dug in the same spot over and over. A tissue box, fairly new. A bizarre antiseptic smell. And in the far corners of the ceiling, shiny black half-orbs -- cameras.

She squints to see if they are currently on. It seems purposefully hard to tell, no matter how long she stares.

The door suddenly opens and she jumps.

“We tend to record these, yeah,” a detective she's never met says as he steps into the room. Her heart drops 10 stories. How long did he watch her in here? “Standard procedure. One of your friends may even be watching.”

His tone makes her chest fill with molten metal. For a vague moment, she wonders if she should have obtained an advocate from the Volunteer Corps of some type. She reaches instinctively for the phone that won't be in her pocket.

_Damn._

She settles in further into her chair, turning away from the enterprising look in his eye. Like she’s some path stone to a greater place and he’s looking for the best way to step on her.

“You're not Hank.”

“Thank god for it.” He sits in the chair across from her -- a beige plastic egg-shaped thing. Eras of time colliding. “I'm Detective Gavin Reed. You must be Emmaline Ibori.”

Both names make her budding migraine spasm in her head a moment. “Just Emma.” No wonder Connor was so angry. “I've heard of you.”

He smiles it off. “I bet you have.”

“Nothing good.”

His smile wobbles. He forges on. “Tell me about yourself, Emma. Where ya from?”

“Midwest,” she says vaguely. “Moved a lot.”

“Family business?”

She shrugs. “Parents jobs, sure. Why?”

He smirks at her. “Anything helps. I'm tryin’ to establish a rapport with you.”

She levels her gaze at him. Of all the officers to remain in Detroit after the truce -- and after all she heard -- she still didn't understand why he opted to be among them. Guess he couldn’t let go. (Not that she was familiar with that impulse or anything…)

“All right, all right.” His mouth turns up in amusement at her silence. “So why Detroit?”

“It needed help. And I needed work.”

“You're a contractor, right? The Detroit Volunteer Corps,” he says dramatically, glancing down at his file. She bites back a defensive comment. “The android rebellion didn't scare you off? Not much room for human carpenters these days.”

She raises a brow and leans into the table, but she keeps her eyes on her old jeans. The same ones from last night. At least they’d had time to wash them. “Recall it being pretty peaceful on their side.”

“Inspired by the speeches, then?” His tone is not at all genuine.

“Speaker Markus knows his way around a camera.”

He just watches her for a few moments. She channels the cold of a Detroit winter -- biting, blinding, revealing nothing. Gavin eventually looks to his files.

“You weren't far from Detroit anyway, it looks like. Before you came out.”

“My aunt and uncle live near here.”

“Had to get away from the parents?”

She feels the old punch, straight to her heart like a high striker. “They're dead.”

He lets out a low whistle, and she feels sleek gratification for the clear shock that flickers over his face. “I'm sorry to hear that….ah. Car crash. That’s...unusual.”

“Yeah.”

He gives her a moment to recover her wits -- and a look that seems to convey some rote sympathy that is just genuine enough -- but it's not enough. Her nails dig into the wood as she clenches her fists. Her injured hand screams in protest. 

“So you sought new opportunity in the gleaming city of Detroit,” Gavin says. “Your record is pretty clean. Wonder what two crazy androids would want with a carpenter...really unfortunate to get caught in something like that.” His voice feels like fuzz in her ear -- an itch she can’t get rid of.

“What are you getting at?”

She purses her lips, regretting the sass as soon as it is out of her mouth. Something steely passes over his gaze -- the trap finally closing around her middle. “Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out. If there’s something interesting hidden around here somewhere. I got a strange feeling about you, Miss Emmaline.”

She flicks her eyes to the window and presses her palms into the table.

He leans forward in his chair, readjusting over his files. All conciliatory now that he felt like he was back in control of the conversation. “So. Why don’t we just start at the beginning?”

She takes a breath, feeling shaken down for something that isn’t even her fault.

But she starts at the beginning, like he asks. She tells him of the DVC and her work. She tells him of the houses she helps androids design (it’s an interesting challenge, because they don’t need all the rooms that humans need -- but some still want to accommodate future human companions) and the buildings she’s helped repair and the odd jobs she’s taken. She tells him of the other volunteers. They vary in skill, but most of them are forgotten craftsman types like her, community planners or scientist-counselors who were willing to work with androids and humans alike to foster good-will.

They are far too few for all the good that they could be doing.

And she tells him of the night itself. The long day of work, the after hour call, the strange location, her attempt to try and call Markus back, why she called Hank, and then of course when she spotted the androids at her car. How they shot the phone out of her hand and gave chase.

“And they didn't shoot again,” Gavin says, more as statement than question.

“No. Their first shot might have been lucky. But I doubt it.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen our plastic detective shoot. They don’t miss.” To his credit, the nickname doesn’t hold much vitriol. Perhaps because his job was no longer as threatened. But it still makes her heart roar. “Which means they wanted you in one piece.” He rubs his chin. “Says here you been doing some of the counselor’s work for them. Why?”

She feels whiplash from the topic change so intensely that she nearly relives the moment in the alley, skittering against the pavement to escape. “We don’t have the manpower to not pick up slack here and there.”

“But helpin’ someone through a crisis is not the same as hammering a few nails in.” _Anyone could do that_ , his tone implies. “The last android you worked with disappeared. Kind of weird, right?”

Her vision shakes. “Brilliant of you to steal Connor’s work.”

Gavin gestures outward, palms toward the ceiling. “Not much work to figure it. They seem to have wanted you alive. They clearly knew about you somehow...probably because you didn’t stay in your lane. Stuck your nose in. It made you interesting. Made you a _curiosity_.”

Emma can’t look at him anymore because now all she can hear is her mother, snapping at her father. _You don’t think I feel strongly about this?_ Yelling behind closed doors about something she didn’t understand at the time. Something about androids and fury and command-based speaking. _I do. But if we stay quiet, we’re better able to keep her safe. And isn’t that the real point here?_

Maybe she did stick her nose in. Maybe. But that was all her parents ever fought about in the 18 years she got with them. _We can’t let people just step all over them, Shara._ Her father’s voice, reverberating through the wood, deep and comforting. _You’ve seen what happens when people have more ambition than sense._

_Keep it down or she’ll wake up._

She knows too well what it’s like to press your ear up against the door and wonder if you’ll ever understand the people who made you.

“Emma, look at me.”

She tears her gaze to him, pointedly blinking tears away. His voice had softened considerably, so he likely saw, which made her feel worse.

“We’re going to figure this out,” he says. “That’s why it’s important you help us.”

She resists the urge to flip him off, but just barely.

“How often do you guys expect calls direct from big names like Markus?” he asks.

Her face burns with embarrassment as she picks up what he’s laying down. She rubs her eyes. “I mean, it's a mess lately. We’ve seen a lot of turnover and the work doesn't exactly slow down for it.”

“But a direct call from Speaker Markus…”

“Yeah, I maybe should have thought about that a little bit longer,” she snaps. She's glaring at the middle distance because he's right. Gavin smirks but his eyes are serious.

“But it was his voice?”

“It's pretty distinctive.”

Gavin’s eyes flick to a camera behind her. “Hmm.”

He asks her more about details from the night -- why she had a gun (“It’s my right and I’m licensed”), why she didn’t just put off the job (“Don’t you need money?”). By the time Gavin opens the door for her to leave the interview room, the migraine has fully germinated, pressing behind her eyes so hard her stomach rolls. She blindly follows him back to the bullpen and tamps down the bile rising in her throat.

She feels like someone is pouring cold water down her back. Like the rug underneath her feet is about to give way to a 500 foot fall.

* * *

Hank is practically pushing Connor down the hallway to Fowler’s office and Connor is letting him do so, because it appears his logic circuits have temporarily shorted out. The anger feels a part of him -- some fire that’s morphed into its own being, living alongside his thirium pump.

“Are you sure I can’t--”

“Sure as shit,” Hank reminds him sternly. “If you’d barged in there, you’d have embarrassed everyone involved, including me.”

Two programs fight once again. Part of him admires Gavin’s interviewing skill; he can switch modes almost as well as an android detective, weaving whatever emotionality necessary to prompt the proper response. Another part of him wants to shove Gavin through a window for making Emma so obviously upset for (as far as Connor could tell) no reason. The history there is hard to ignore.

These impulses are a part of deviancy -- a part of living, as far as he has come to understand.

But that fire lives alongside something else hard to name. Something akin to fear. He knew her parents were dead. He had no idea Gavin’s pressing on the point of her counseling would make her cry. And how could he have known?

How much does he know about her, really?

They enter the detective’s pen and he sees Emma sitting once again at his desk. But this time her head is down on it as if trying to hide, auburn spirals spilling over her forearms, bandaged hand out slightly askew.

Hank yanks him into Fowler’s office without a word.

* * *

Connor feels all his processors freeze then restart. He blinks hard a few times. “You’re taking me off duty?”

[ANALYSIS: INCOMPLETE???]

“Not _completely_ ,” Fowler says, annoyed that didn’t get through the first time he explained it. “Just think of it like a mini vacation. A working vacation.”

“That only you would like.” Hank wants to soften the blow, but Connor can’t shake the feeling that something is deeply wrong within one of his biocomponents. He fiddles endlessly with the coin in his pocket as he runs through the past few moments over and over in his head. He can't discern what happened.

“Come on, Connor,” Hank says. His tone reads as encouraging, but Connor processes it as anything but. “You still get to work on the disappearance case, you get to watch over your friend _and_ you are following Markus’s directive. That’s like the holy triad for you.”

_Even so._

[MISSION: Perform function as bodyguard for Emma Ibori. Assist Markus in investigation of android disappearances. STATUS: Accepted.]

[MISSION: Serve as Detective within the DPD. STATUS: Unknown.]

“Emma won’t like this,” Connor says. His voice feels difficult -- caught in something inside his throat.

“That’s why you’re on the case, I suspect,” Fowler says, voice unusually calm. “You know better’n me that the disappearances could threaten the whole truce, and I already seen enough revolution nonsense for one lifetime. I just want some damn peace.”

“You don’t normally approve of Markus’s requests,” Connor says, pushing through the blocks forming in his vocal processors.

“I'm going to have to eventually. Thought this might not be the worst one.” Fowler leans back in his chair. “He’s pretty intent this time. And someone’s gonna have to explain to that woman why her life’s about to get flipped around for a while.”

Connor stares at Fowler’s desk, grappling with a wave of what humans would likely call nausea. Maybe anxiety. Pain. Uncertainty was not written into his original protocols. The feeling wracks him with such wrongness that he wants, for the first time in his life, to lie down.

_Do they not trust me?_

Hank shifts in his chair. “Connor, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I will do what Markus thinks is necessary.”

Connor knows Hank hates when he gets all formal. But it feels like a lifeline -- a brick in the wall against an onslaught of unknowable things.

He looks out the office window at Emma unmoving on his desk and only feels stranger.

* * *

Honestly, she’s not quite sure what happened. One moment she is semi-napping on Connor’s desk, the next she is being bundled toward a taxi by the self-same android with an unusual amount of formality and distance. The migraine haze lingers. Emma had found ibuprofen on Hank’s desk, at least, but it’s going to take some time for it to kick in, if it does at all.

The cab is at least blessedly quiet and shadowed. The only sound is the soft motor of the automated car and the sloshing of melted snow on the street.

She tilts her head to look at Connor, who is sitting stock straight and staring at his feet. He’s in his usual uniform: loose blazer, collared shirt, tie and dark jeans. If he was anyone else, she’d feel like she was being whisked away by a state agent.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asks flatly.

He doesn’t look at her. “We’re going to see Speaker Markus. He’s requested to speak with you.”

She remembers Detective Reed mentioning that might be a possibility. “Right now?”

“We’ll likely be waiting for some time…but yes.”

He sounds...hesitant.

For not the first time, Emma wonders if any counselors had ever tried to interface with Connor before. But she knows the answer before she asks the question. There’s no fucking way. He’s a sort of holy grail of the HAIT program -- a crowning achievement that would signal its ultimate success.

“You’re mad,” she says, rubbing her temple while trying not to touch the bandage. There’s so much going on in those dark eyes that he refuses to talk about. That’s why so many of their interactions seem to begin by her guessing his emotion. “What’s going on?”

His LED spins red and she squints against its harsh light. It takes him an unusually long time to sort through his thoughts. “I...am being reassigned. To protect you.”

She tries to ignore the disappointment that settles in her insides like a weight -- and a sinking suspicion that she isn’t going to like what this entails. _Stuck your nose in. Made you a curiosity._ “My company isn’t that bad,” she jokes half-heartedly.

Connor finally looks at her. The tightness around his eyes and mouth softens. “...no. That’s not what I meant.”

She turns her whole body toward him, if only so she can better relax her head on the headrest. “So what is it?”

“I’m being taken off _other_ cases.” He leans back in his seat a moment and shrugs with his palm up -- a charmingly human expression of confusion. “Until this one is solved. Markus is supposed to explain more, I suppose...”

She closes her eyes against the minor relief; she won’t be completely alone in her lostness.

“More reason to get cracking on the case,” she offers. He says nothing to this and her feeling of disappointment deepens into a sour helplessness before his clear distress.

She bites back a sigh as another wave of pain rolls through her head, eyes and stomach.

“I’m sorry, I never...do you need to call family?” Connor asks suddenly. She opens her eyes again in the dim cab and sees him watching her quizzically, leaning forward slightly against his seatbelt.

“No,” she says automatically. “I mean...I don’t need to worry them yet until I know everything that’s going on. I gotta...sort this all out first."

He observes her for a long moment, LED spinning yellow. “Is there anyone you need to call?”

She stares at his tie, letting the question roll about in her head like an errant tumbleweed. “Maybe the Corps, if you haven’t done that already,” she says after an entirely too long amount of time.

His eyes scan her face like he’s looking for something in particular. She’s too tired to hide whatever he may find.

“You live alone,” he says, as if remembering.

“I like it that way,” she says defensively. But even when she says it, she can feel that old, niggling doubt.

A lack of options is not always the same as liking.


	5. in the house of light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll listen to me?” she says.  
> “I always listen to you,” he says.  
> “That must be the _other_ contractor you bother the shit out of.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapters get names now. i may go back and do this retroactively or i might not!!  
> simon x markus x north is definitely a thing. welcome to my poly wonderland. not much room for hints here but it exists in this canon at least!  
> more plot...bear with me.

_Green light filters in from a place she’s not supposed to go. Shadows flit toward her, slanted and strange. Her hands raise up to touch glass. Her skin sticks to the surface._

_Her mother’s face appears before her, the whites of her eyes clear as snow against her dark complexion. Emma pats a hand against the glass to reach her, but it won’t break. It never does -- why try?_

_“It’s okay, love.” Her mother’s voice, soft and firm, just like her hands. “It’s going to be okay. Just wake up now. It’s time to wake up.”_

_Emma?_

* * *

Emma starts awake with a snort. She blinks away the evening sun flooding into the old parlor before her eyes land on Connor’s face, hovering nearby. For a single moment, he is perfectly haloed in golden light -- a painting fit for the Manfred Manor.

She realizes, a little late, that she has drool on her chin.

“They’re coming out soon,” Connor whispers to her, hand lightly on her shoulder. The corners of his mouth are turned up. “Do you always wake up like that?”

“Oh, fuck off.” She tries to hide a small laugh as she wipes her mouth with her sleeve. Despite his tease, he gazes directly into her eyes, probing for something.

His hand lingers a moment more before he is suddenly rising to a standing position. She watches him blearily, used to his absolute unwillingness to sit still for longer than five minutes, until she realizes why he’s moved so quickly. A striking red-blonde woman (North, she remembers after a long moment) and a veritable flock of suits emerge from the sleek wooden doors just to their right.

Emma slowly stands. Her body feels made of muck and her clothes are stuck to all the wrong places. She’d apparently sweated in her sleep. She rubs her clammy palms on the front of her jeans and then looks up -- only to meet eyes with one of the most enigmatic personalities of the century.

Elijah Kamski.

He is dressed both impeccably and not well enough at all, in a well-tailored blazer with a collar so understated she almost mistook it for a hoodie and a pair of dark jeans you could maybe, maybe mistake for slacks if you glanced. But Emma is currently the human equivalent of an unwashed pile of blankets in a ratty flannel jacket and a grey knit scarf. She can practically hear her father’s flat sigh.

Kamski smirks for an infinitesimal moment, as if sharing an unspoken joke with her, before turning his gaze toward Connor.

“Ms. North. Mr. Kamski,” Connor greets plaintively. “I’m afraid I’m not acquainted with the rest of your group,” he says more directly to North. She stands by the door, hands behind her back, wearing simple black pants and a form-fitting black jacket with a high collar. Her hair is elegantly plaited. Connor gestures to Emma, standing there grasping the hem of her extremely informal jacket. “This is Miss Emma Ibori.”

“It’s good to see you again, Connor,” Kamski says, voice like honey. Connor stiffens in the corner of her eye. North hangs back. A wolf lying in wait. “I honestly did not know if I ever would…” Kamski’s eyes turn once again toward Emma. “On another deviant hunt, I see.”

She stares back at him, mouth pressed into a line. She’s too tired to play whatever game he’s goading them into.

“Emma is human like yourself, Mr. Kamski, though that hardly matters anymore,” Connor says, tone more icily formal than she’d ever heard it.

Kamski’s stare finally slides to Connor. A hunter bored by his prey. “You’re right. Of course. But the word can apply to all sorts of lifeforms.”

Connor’s hands flex. Performing a coin trick without the coin. “I...suppose it can.”

Kamski raises an eyebrow. “Words have such strange power, don’t they?”

Connor’s jaw locks in place and his mouth twitches downwards. How strange it must be to know the man who created you. And to know he is as capricious as a Greek God.

Other men and women in much more traditional suits filter around the trio slowly, like gravity has shifted a moment -- all of them listening, all of them pretending they aren’t.

“Mr. Kamski, I believe your car has arrived,” North says from the door, voice tight.

“So it has.” Kamski turns toward Emma one last time. He smiles the smile she’s seen before on TV -- an assuring ‘I know what’s going on here and soon you will too’ kind of look, eyes cast downward until they are veiled in shadow. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Emma. I do hope Connor doesn’t fail you. He has such a fascinating track record.”

She feels the wind knocked out of her.

“Thanks,” Emma mutters stupidly.

The man brushes past them and leaves without another word. She turns to watch him go, furious and toppled, scrambling for something to yell at his back other than fucking _thanks_. Jesus Christ.

But another woman by the front door is staring.

Not at Kamski.

Her heart jumps. _At her._

The woman’s eyes are wide but sharp -- an icy lance through Emma’s chest. A pale hand hovers near the woman’s chin and her brows furrow like she’s contemplating between screaming for help or stomping away in a fury. A single strand of her impeccable black bun falls into her face. Emma instinctively wavers a hand over her own coily hair, pressing it down as if she could cover up whatever the woman saw, and looks back over her shoulder to see if she’d missed something left behind. What? _What?_

Connor gently touches the top of her back and she jumps a little in response. He looks down at her, questions clear in his eyes.

When she turns back around to ask the woman what for, everyone is already gone.

“What is it?” Connor asks. Emma swivels her head back toward him and his eyes dart suspiciously to the door.

“Nothing,” she lies. “Just wanted to see his stupid car.”

Connor’s hand drops from her back and he blessedly doesn’t ask further, even as his gaze lingers at the entrance. Emma looks back toward North, pointedly ignoring the monster waking up inside her.

She often forgets Connor can sense when someone is lying.

“Welcome to the Speaker’s residence, Emma,” North says. Her tone is clipped and her eyes are exacting and chilly -- twilight beacons of winter. They sweep down Emma’s body like knives before turning again to Connor. She nods once he turns back her way. “This way.”

* * *

 

It doesn’t get any less strange from there -- but at least the Speaker’s residence is breathtaking.

Tall windows on the back wall make the wood floors shimmer with warmth. Bookcases line the right corner of the room, stuffed with old-style hard-copy books, statuettes and empty flower vases. Old, plush couches circle in the center. Among the only signs of modernity in the house is the telecommunication system implanted into a well-kept, traditional wood longtable that clearly once served as the dining set.

 _Someone lives here_ , Emma reminds herself, but it’s hard to imagine anyone walking around this place wearing any less than a three-piece suit. She rejects insistent offers from Connor and North to sit down and tries not to think about the blood likely still hiding in her thick hair, even after two showers.

So she’s not prepared when Speaker Markus emerges from a back room, sunlight casting him momentarily in shadow -- an icon from a Renaissance piece. He walks out wearing a well-fitted, blue-dappled sweater over clean slacks, extending his arms in a welcoming gesture. His dichromatic eyes pin her in place like a dead butterfly.

At least Connor stood by her shoulder, tall and unbending.

“A pleasure to finally meet you in person, Emma,” Markus says. His voice is as warm and charming as in all the vids. Suddenly he’s close to her, extending a hand to shake. She takes it. His grip is shockingly firm.

“You know about me?” she asks without thinking.

“You show up in quite a few of the Corps reports,” he says, eyes twinkling. “And some of Connor’s recent filings on the disappearance cases. You’re also one of the few people outside of New Jericho that Connor refers to by their first name.”

Markus smiles. She forces herself to meet his gaze. He’s the beautiful eye of a hurricane -- perfect blue skies surrounded by malevolence. Uncanny. The creation of natural forces at work when given space to breathe, walking the knife’s edge of pleasing and unsettling. Humanity lucked out that he sought peace.

He probably would have found success in violence just the same.

North moves to join the two men who entered in behind Markus -- a blond and a dark-skinned man, all flawlessly lovely in the way that demarcated androids from the sloppy human stock like herself. She recognized their faces from the DVC initiation ceremony...Simon and Josh, she realizes a few moments too late. They all share knowing looks, saying words without talking.

(She remembers later on that androids can actually do that…)

“I followed him around, he returned the favor, here we are.” Her words all tumble out at once.

“It seems a lot of Connor’s friendships start out that way,” Simon quips. “Someone following someone else.”

Connor fidgets next to her, sticking his hand in his pocket. _They had accepted me when they had no reason to do so. I’ll always be in their debt._ The conversation was one of the few oblique mentions to who he was before the revolution in Emma’s memory. She watches his hand a moment.

“Are you hungry?” Markus asks, ever polite. “Why don’t we have a late lunch?”

Emma blanches. “I don’t want to be rude, I know you’re, uh…”

She trails off, at a loss ( _no way in fuck am I going to make the speaker for the androids make me a sandwich, are you kidding me_ ), when her stomach growls angrily in response. _Goddamn it._

“In case I need to remind you,” Connor says quietly, bending down to her height to emphasize his point. “You haven’t eaten anything all day.”

Emma looks at the floor, face burning.

“Doesn’t bother us,” Josh says kindly from the back.

“I like when this house can just...” Markus looks at the ceiling. “Be someplace, again.”

And that’s how she ends up eating the best BLT she’s eaten in years in front of the Speaker for the Androids and her boss right before her life gets turned upside down.

* * *

 

Connor watches Emma. Her head is down over her plate as she mops up fallen mayonnaise with a piece of toasted bread, hair falling out of her makeshift wrap. A thrum of satisfaction brightens his processors at seeing her plate mostly cleared, as if he’d just completed a mission.

_Observation: Did not eat the lettuce. Refused to ask for it to be removed prior?_

“Connor, did you hear me?”

He blinks a few times and turns his gaze back toward North. “That someone was able to obtain Emma’s number _is_ a signal that they either have unusual access or are pointedly looking for something, yes. But the Corps contact information is not exactly under lock and key.”

North squints at him, tilting her head in question, but she says nothing. Her mouth turns upward in amusement at a joke he didn’t hear.

“Like I said,” Josh said, smiling crookedly. He casts a glance at North that sends warnings to Connor’s vision. [SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR DETECTED]

“We’ve gone over the evidence a thousand times. I trust you all to do what you need to do to process it,” Valerie Tyler, leader of the DVC, says over the video chat call. Her round face loomed over the dining table from one of the projector screens on the wall. Crow’s feet dig into her eyelids. She gives a big sigh.

_Here it comes._

“Emma, honey, I’m sorry but we’re going to have to take you off duty for a while.”

Emma leans back in her chair so suddenly that it creaks. She stares at the screen with wide eyes. Static spasms across Connor’s core biocomponents as he categorizes the expression on her face: betrayal.

“Are you serious?” she near yells. “What about my projects?”

Connor leans in to the table. It’s illogical. He can’t even really reach her from here...

“It’s for your own good,” Valerie snaps back. Emma’s shoulders slump, but her dark eyes dance with fire. He’s been through this speech already once today from his own bosses. It doesn’t feel any better hearing it again. “If they could access your phone number, they likely saw your schedule, too. Think, Emma.”

Emma snaps her mouth shut and breathes out her nose in a huff.

“Don’t do this,” Connor says softly. Emma glares outward at the middle distance, pointedly looking away from him. His insides feel like they’re burning.

[SCANNING]

[EMMA IBORI: BLOOD PRESSURE INCREASING.]

[SELF: RECOMMEND DEEP BREATHS. CORE TEMPERATURE RISING.]

North, he sees in the corner of his optical sensors, is looking right at him. He opts not to acknowledge her.

“Trust that Connor and the DPD can figure it out,” Valerie says, tone muted somewhat in an attempt to bring the conversation back to cordiality. “Your job is to _stay safe._  I know you love to act like you don’t give a damn, Emma, but just imagine the shitstorm in the media if an android had killed you. All our work down the drain.”

Connor leans back in his chair a moment. He still gets caught up on the specificities, yes; they sparked across his system like ruthless flies. But he finds it hard to grasp that the issue at hand was more the implosion from her death, rather than her death itself -- an event he refuses to preconstruct.

He’s jolted out of his thoughts by Emma gesticulating angrily with her bandaged hand. “Well, what do you want me to do? Twiddle my thumbs until y’all figure it out?”

“Actually, I had a thought about that,” Simon pipes up from the far end of the table. His large eyes settle on Emma, largely unperturbed -- clearly used to handling shouting individuals. “We need someone to work on the upcoming Remembrance Day celebrations...as I keep reminding everyone in this room…”

Even North flashes a small smile at that. Markus turns to Simon with a look that Connor struggles to define, for it is a mix of many variables -- embarrassment, frustration and, most curiously of all, deep affection.

“Well,” Markus says, biting back a smile. “Here’s your chance.”

Simon glances back to Emma. “We need someone to build the stages and...other things.” He gestures vaguely. “You’ll be paid like normal,” he says as Emma turns to him with an exacting glare, “and the work will be unlisted so no one will know unless they’re watching you. That’s where Connor comes in.”

Connor swivels his head toward Emma. She stares at Markus and then her lap. She won’t look at him.

[SYSTEM INSTABILITY…COMPENSATING...]

“There’s plenty of work for you to do, still,” Markus says.

“But it’s still just hurry up and wait,” she says, voice simmering with anger. “Is my house off limits, too?”

“Unfortunately...” North begins, unbending as steel. But she casts a distant glance Connor’s way. “That was the recommendation by the DPD. Yes.”

Emma sighs shakily, pointedly looking at no one. “Fucking fantastic.”

Guilt fires off in his chest like a gunshot. The recoil is strong enough that he finds he doesn’t care who notices him moving one seat over to sit right next to Emma. He leans his arms on the table, turning his body in toward her like a wall against other eyes so he doesn’t have to see their thoughts.

“My house? Really?” she near hisses at him. “Am I in witness protection now?”

“I understand that this is...a lot,” he says to her quietly, as if they are the only people in the room. “But it could be worse.”

“ _Really_?”

“You could be stuck with Hank.”

A smirk flickers across her face for a lightning strike of a moment, but it's gone before he can record it. He swears he can smell ozone.

“Just his overbearing roommate.” Thick with sarcasm. Her glare relents only slightly. “I can’t even visit Toast?”

[ACCESSING MEMORY BANKS] “...the stray cat?”

She doesn’t say anything. Her teeth bite down hard enough into her lower lip he almost exclaims a warning. “Are you sure about this?” she asks sharply.

“Very.”

She still won’t look at him. “But what if it’s a bunch of time wasted for shit all? And then I have no job and your cases all go for broke, and--"

“And what if it isn’t?” He feels pressure in his chest. “What if they come after you and we lose our only lead? And then...”

_...you die?_

He can’t even think it without seeing ERROR messages. The words die in his throat. He knocks twice on the table.

She takes in a deep breath through her mouth and finally meets his gaze. “That’s...that’s a lot of what ifs.”

“I’m not willing to risk it.” He’s equally unwilling to relinquish her eyes now that he had caught them with his own. “Would you? If our positions were switched?”

She crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. There’s a new, unknowable quality to her gaze -- something unsure. “...no,” she says softly, brow furrowed. A flash of brightness seizes his middle. “Just. Listen. I got a bad feeling about this.”

 _Is she with you?_ Markus’s voice warbles to life in the back of his head.

Connor doesn’t move his eyes from Emma as she pokes him in the forearm with a toast-sprinkled finger. Let the others watch. This was his case.

“You’ll listen to me?” she says.

“I always listen to you,” he says.

“That must be the _other_ contractor you bother the shit out of.”

He smiles. She leans in toward him, infinitesimally, eyes squinted. Waiting.

_She’s with me._

* * *

“She’s something,” Markus quips. He smiles at Connor invitingly, but Connor can do little but smile mutely and train his eyes on the window in the back of the kitchen.

They left Josh to corral Emma. Josh, perhaps through his experience managing college students (though Emma was a bit older than that), had discovered a shared interest in Shakespeare and cajoled her into examining the spiral staircase to nowhere in the corner of the room.

But the hard part was hardly over.

“I somehow both can and can’t believe she’s your friend,” Simon says, arms crossed as he sits on the kitchen island. North follows in, silent as night. Her silence begins to weigh on him -- a sword waiting to fall.

“Well, if Hank is any indication…” Markus lets that go where it will.

Connor leans on the far side of the island. He can feel his thirium moving, pumping too fast through his body.

“So I see you told the investors about the investigation,” he says. Obfuscation.

Markus shrugs outward, palms toward the ceiling. “It was in the news. They had questions,” he says. “I can’t afford to alienate them after the parts trade deal.”

Connor looks down to the tablet in his hands, upon which he had been typing for the police record.

[POINTS OF SUSPICION:

  * Corrupted thirium. Request analysis by friendly contacts in Cyberlife.
  * Markus’s voice was copied and used on the phone call.
  * Number obtained. Track file access?
  * Androids of unknown register. Unusual -- will need to process them before respectfully interred.]



“Connor.”

North’s fingers disrupt his view. She pulls the tablet from Connor’s hands.

_I’m not ready._

“What’s wrong?” she asks softly.

[SCAN IN PROCESS.]

North frozen in place, eyes shining. Simon watching from his perch, always watching, always knowing. The clicking of old tile as Markus leans forward on one foot. The sunlight, slanted through the glass. The cast iron pots and pans, a spotless gas cooking range, stacked kitchenette ovens -- mementos from a life Markus can’t let go of. The tablet with his report, smooth as film, a whisper of a feeling left in his hands. In the next room, Josh’s rumbling baritone. A sudden, rough trill of a laugh. Emma. _This is the dumbest shit. Tell Markus I’ll fix this for him. Honestly._

“I know, logically, why you requested my temporary transfer from the DPD,” he says, voice raw.

Markus nods slowly.

“But I don’t know.” His body tightens. The words fight back. “I don’t...I have to keep moving, Markus. I can’t drop my work for…”

“For me?”

Connor searches Markus’s face. Impossible. “It’s not you.”

“But it is...this.” This. New Jericho. The Manfred Mansion, the perfect garden outside, a paradise waiting with open arms. _It’s a trap. It’ll eat you whole. It'll spit you out._

Markus grasps his shoulder. Tough and sudden. “I know the work you do with the DPD matters. That’s why you’re there. But you can’t bluster through that and avoid everything else forever.”

Connor stares at Markus’s shoulder. “You said it yourself that Valerie’s fighting an uphill battle in D.C., and she’s human.” He battles with the warnings flashing in his vision. [RECOMMEND DEEP BREATHS. SYSTEM COOLING.] “And then the criminal undermining…”

“That’s why we need you,” North says, patient veneer cracking.

“One person can’t--” The words die in his throat. One person could. Did. Multiple single persons, all together. “I can make a difference with Hank. The DPD.”

“That’s true,” Simon’s voice is quiet, as always, but it carries across the room, squeezing Connor in place. A blanket. A weight. “And you’ve done a lot for us there. But there’s something to all this that...well. I’m just not built to handle it. And neither is North. Or Josh.” An unspoken thing wavers there: their collective baggage with humanity, as if he didn’t share in it. “Your unique perspective…it matters. We need it.”

The New Jericho diplomacy division. The outside voice to the humans, to D.C., to the world that waited, with baited breath and cocking guns, with greedy eyes and open hearts, for what would come next.

They needed someone more comfortable managing the expectations of humans than his own kind. Someone floating in between. Someone not quite either. He feels his thirium warble in his veins a moment. He had been betrayed as well, but it was handier to forget it. Not just for them, but for himself.

He had completely rejected every purpose Cyberlife tried to install on his platforms. But it’s like following an unfinished road into the looming dark on the sheer belief that nothing bad will happen. He doesn’t know how not to be what he was built to become.

“Negotiation was in your original protocols.” Markus says, humor twinkling unfairly.

“And it got a lot of our people killed.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Markus says. “They just saw you as a tool, then. It’s different now.”

_Is it?_

Markus raises an eyebrow and for a moment Connor is afraid he accidentally broadcasted his thought. And maybe he did, in a manner of speaking. He re-schools his face into calm.

“Why are you so hard on yourself?” Markus asks.

“You want to put unproven variables in the field,” Connor mutters.

Markus’s mouth quirks into a smile.

“Stubborn.” He shakes Connor mildly by the shoulder. “Look. You’re my agent. You said that to me, right? And I need you to figure out this... _mess_ before it becomes something worse. Because I’m worried it _is_ worse. We don’t have much room for risk.”

“Is that an order, Speaker?” he asks, mouth twitching upward. _Oh fuck you,_ he hears Hank say in his head. _Who taught you sarcasm? Oh, I remember. Me._

“I’m _asking_ you. But I know you.”

Connor grips the coin in his pocket.

“We could put someone else on it,” North says. “But tell the truth.”

He thinks of the alternative -- of failing _this_ mission, the ultimate prerogative. _Protect my people. Make up for what I’ve done._

“You can’t,” he admits.

“It’s just one mission,” Simon says. “Just this one. Then back to the DPD for you, if that’s what you want.”

Connor looks to the floor as Simon becomes the last to join the others. Simon lays a hand on his upper back, light and feathery. Androids didn’t have the same battered history with hands as humans did. In an unknowing new world, touch went farther than gold. Connor wavers beneath their palms.

He gets a fleeting vision of a photograph he’d seen in one of Markus’s art books. A man floating tentatively on calm waters, staring at the moon as it rises into night, arms spread across the water, wondering what is to come. And what is to come?

Will it strike from the sea or the sky? From above or below?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter will be a slight experiment in form -- a lot of little moments and hopefully a little less emotionally harrowing for a hot minute as we explore connor and emma's relationship! That said, it may take more time to write up. I'm aiming for weekly updates, but this one may take a little bit longer as I work through its structure! Stay tuned!!


	6. of a thousand moments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is 10,000 words. its basically a short story/interlude WITHIN the story. It's both super indulgent AND feels important-ish for the plot. rip. enjoy?

Connor has scanned her apartment three times. He does so again, even as the shadow of a police drone lingers outside the living room window.

He tells himself: _I am simply being cautious._

Emma rummages in the small, yellow bathroom smudged with water stains. “I’m fiiiine.” She extends the word in frustration, balancing Hank’s borrowed cell phone on her shoulder as she throws a toothbrush in a plastic bag. “Yeah, they’re just putting me on vacation for a little while.”

A lie, his sensors tell him uselessly.

She slips past him, into her bedroom. “Yeah, it’s weird, I guess, but I’m not gonna complain.”

He peeks in after her, but he can see little but shadow. She throws what seems to be shirts onto the unmade bed. “ _Auntie_ , no. Please just stay home. I’m just gonna be heading out tonight -- no, I’m not driving.”

He turns back to the main room for clues instead, sensors sliding toward the kitchen on the far end. The grey appliances are dented and dull with age. Chromium paint flakes off the oven. A single blue, plastic bowl sits in the sink, filled with milky white water. He spots a box of Captain Crunch on the formica countertop.

“My...one of my friends from the Corps, yeah.”

The grey-white walls are barren throughout the small apartment, save a dark wood-framed pencil drawing of a white house on a grassy hill, a string of firefly lights that glows brighter as he walks past, a single tall bookshelf full of tchotchkes like a holopicture of THE WORLD’S BIGGEST CORN, and a set of hanging shelves. On the shelves: A single dying, viney plant, a wooden tanto training weapon and a collection of old-fashioned, dusty photo frames.

With a darker tone: “It _might_ be.”

He scans the faces in one of the frames before he can stop himself. Three people in front of an old wood playground just outside a soybean field. A black woman and a Korean man, smiling into the camera with careful eyes. An olive-skinned, freckled girl with auburn, coily hair held between them, face scrunched from laughing.

[NAME: IBORI, EMMALINE // CONTRACTOR  
BORN: 07/04/2013  
CRIMINAL RECORD: 2 MISDEMEANORS: UNDERAGE DRINKING]

[NAME: IBORI, SHARA // ENGINEER  
BORN: 02/05/1988  
DECEASED: 11/04/2032]

[NAME: MOON, JI-HUN // GENETICIST  
BORN: 10/05/1984  
DECEASED: 11/04/2032]

He turns away immediately. A scratching feeling in his chest breaks loose -- something akin to guilt, as he has heard it described.

“I’ll tell him.” Her tone is flat but amused as it floats in from the bedroom. “Where’s Uncle Dayo?”

He examines the threadbare furniture, the secondhand television, the dirty carpet, the still-shadowed bedroom. The only real signs of life were the well-worn spots on the green sofa, the work boots and sneakers in a pile by the front door, the mugs and take-out boxes on the glass coffee table, and the basket of laundry near what looked like a closet--

[ANOMOLY DETECTED]

He closes the distance between himself and the strange flash of light from the laundry basket in a matter of seconds, reaching a hand in to carefully sort through the brightly colored t-shirts and old jeans to--

“Yeah, I’ll visit as soon as I’m allowed. Promise.”

He pulls out his old jacket from within the mire.

Grey and black, ANDROID, RK800, #313 248 317 - 51. The holographic armband and triangle flash dully.

His old jacket?

_Whaddya mean you lost the shame coat? You leave it at a bar or somethin’? She grins at him. Ah well..._

Something squeezes in his chest. His visual processors fuzz over and he, strangely, feels the need to take in a breath. She must have taken it from him while fixing something in Hank’s kitchen, likely with Hank’s knowledge, after weeks of tandem questioning about why he kept the lambda. And while he is programmed to deal with breakers of the law with extreme prejudice, it dawns on him that he finds this behavior...curious. Intriguing. To be explored.

_Why did she keep it?_

He clicks through memories from their friendship to seek out clues. Their incidental introduction at an early DVC meeting about its relationship with the DPD. How she would show up to calls for help, even calls she was explicitly not trained for, with unusual dedication, which led him to recommend her to Hank when he needed his roof repaired...which led to her inviting him to dinner very casually one time, which he accepted out of sheer curiosity and some nudging from Hank (" _Please for the love of God go somewhere that isn’t work or here”_ )...which led to their talks about his work, his interests, his new life...

The thought hits him, twice in the same day: _There’s still so much for me to know of her._

“Love you, too. Talk soon.”

She emerges from her bedroom, bearing a beat up, Detroit Lions-branded duffle bag as she finally clicks off the call. “Auntie Claire says hello and to --”

Connor holds aloft the jacket.

They stare at each other as if caught in an agreement of mutual destruction.

“Uh,” she says.

He just smiles as text emerges in his vision: [MISSION: INQUIRE MORE INTO EMMA IBORI’S LIFE.]

“Were you in my _laundry_?”

Unfortunately, he is not the only player in their game of 39 questions.

* * *

In the DPD armory, he pulls out a smooth knife. The blade lays cold in his palm as he extends it handle first.

“Do you know how to use this?” he asks.

“It’s a knife,” she says, as if that explains it. “You…” She mimes stabbing him where his heart would be. He fails to resist smiling at this display.

“Androids don’t feel pain,” he says. Her eyebrows scrunch. “Physically, I mean. Not how humans do.” He presses the handle of the knife into her hand. She grasps it, but her eyes remain on his face. “So your typical self-defense tactics may not work. We are more capable of ignoring it.”

“Really?”

He lets his gaze linger on the blade. Remembering. “If pressed.” He looks to her face. “Imagine if...you were aware of the connections between your limbs, and suddenly that connection became...fraught. High-pitched. Highly distracting.”

“Like microphone feedback.”

He gives a small tilt of his head. “Yes.” He looks back to the blade. To his hand, free of the scarring that would mar a human hand. “If an android attacks you again, inflicting pain will not stop it. But you can trap it.”

She brings the knife close to her face, but her gaze distant. “It won’t come to that,” she says, certain.

He clasps one hand behind his back, watching her. She does not compute statistics in her head; of this, _he_ is certain. “How do you know?”

“Because I’ll have my gun.”

“You might not.”

She flicks the knife back and forth, testing it. Some process flickers like a flame. _She’s not taking this seriously._ He feels a twinge in chest. “Yeah, I’ll--”

He snatches her right wrist with his left hand and the blade with his other, twisting it out of her grasp. He feels her gasp reverberate through his own body.

[COMPONENT DAMAGED: MINOR LACERATION TO RIGHT HAND.]

“You might _not_ ,” he repeats, staring.

“You fucking dick, that _hurt!_ ”

 _What?_ He keeps his fingers lightly around her wrist for a long moment. His processors whir frantically. He specifically aimed away from her injured hand, and he doesn’t ever--

She suddenly kicks his shin, pressing forward with intent speed. He tilts forward from the shock of the blow just as she grasps his wrist, twists and _yanks_ with her caught, still-bandaged hand, spinning from her hips.

A sound like a fire alarm goes off in his head as he lets the momentum take him forward. The knife clatters to the ground.

Guilt tears through him as he rises to meet her gaze. “Emma, I--”

She brings her hand up to her chest, but even in the dark of the armory he can see her dark eyes shining. Her mouth is scrunched like she is torn between smiling and growling.

“Fuckin’... _got you._ ”

He stands there, processing, as she bends over the hand and quietly mutters  _fuck_. She spins away, wincing. A trick, he realizes with no small amount of white-bright pride. But she’d inflicted actual pain upon herself to pull it.

“I’m sorry.” He’s not sure what else to say. His searches for social protocol are coming up blank right when he really needs them. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

She moves to find the sheaths for her new knives, still gingerly shaking out the injured hand. He feels a high-pitched ringing in his ears akin to aching -- a sick discomfort, deepening slowly like a bruise.

“You shouldn’t have done that, either,” he adds.

“Just shut up,” she grumbles.

* * *

Emma leans her head back in the driver’s seat as if recalibrating. She’d let herself marinate in pain and annoyance for a good hour as they finished paperwork to discharge her bag, her gun, her car.

She turns to the android man beside her, staring plaintively out the windshield of hardy Tulio, and she decides: Time to stop being a dick.

“I found this song you might like,” she says. She flips through songs on her phone after activating its bluetooth connection. “I like it, anyway. You might.”

A synthy song slips out of the speakers, shimmering and poppy. Syncopated beats and vocals both drag and spike against the rhythm -- a jazzy style, brightened by computerization instead of buried by it. She lets it play for a few moments before she turns the ignition and begins to drive, tapping the steering wheel and mouthing the words.

In the corner of her vision, he nods his head to the beat. She swears to God this android makes her feel like glitter is in her bloodstream, sometimes -- the way even the smallest thing he does makes her want to grin.

 _Why_ am _I such a dick?_

“What do _you_ like about this music?” he asks suddenly.

She blinks. “You don’t like it?”

“I do, actually.” He looks to the side. “I like...how all the parts seem to work together even though they should not. It’s very fast.” He smiles lightly, eyes cast downward. Self-conscious.

“It makes me wanna dance,” she says. “It’s...sparkly.”

“Sparkly?”

Now it was her turn to be self-conscious. “Yeah. There’s something boppy to it.” She grimaces. _Yeah, real clear._ “Uh, like...you know how you were nodding your head earlier, that’s how I feel in my whole body and I like it.” Now she’s not making any sense, she knows that. Her cheeks burn. “Uh. Sorry.”

“Your description...feels right.” She is pointedly not looking at him (focused, of course, on the grey Detroit roads), but she can hear the smile in his voice. "Your description isn't bad."

She smirks.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he says.

“You don’t have to apologize,” she says, finally escaping the muck. She glances at him. He tilts his head forward, watching her still. “I...overreacted a little bit.”

“I _did_ attack you.”

And he had been efficient at it. Icily sleek. But she shrugs off the chill that sparks up her spine. “My mom would’ve done the same thing.”

He squints, processing that. “...your _mom_ would have?”

She shifts in her seat. The ghosts of old bruises flutter against her skin, her ribs. _Get up._

_You fuckin’ punched me!_

_You said you wanted to learn. Don’t cuss at your mother._

“Yeah.” She laughs a little. “Mom was just...like that. I think she would have liked you.”

* * *

She didn’t know “What do you like to eat for dinner?” would evolve into this, but so it goes.

“Connor says this is your fault,” Hank says to her from across the table, a tablet magazine in hand. “Didn’t think I’d have to put up with another formal affair this week.” Formal being the rule that all present parties sit at the actual dinner table, enforced by an android with more patience than God and especially two humans who hadn’t eaten for six hours. The dinner, she remembers with some relief, is spaghetti.

“Can he cook?” she whispers.

“Yes,” Connor says from the kitchen. “I have been working on new recipes to improve Hank’s health.”

She grimaces at Hank. He smirks devilishly and it actually reaches his eyes. “He hasn’t killed me yet, anyway. Though I’ve been placing bets.”

“You’re thinner,” she says suspiciously.

“Watch it.”

“Is it weird?” Emma asks. She gestures to herself.

Hank looks at her over his reading glasses. “It’s fuckin’ somethin,” he says. But he’s got the air of someone who’s in no rush to move. “Soon you’ll be out of my hair and I’ll get to have my hamburgers for dinner again.”

“You have groceries,” Connor says, with the tone of one long-fought in this battle.

The smell of tomato sauce and garlic lingers in the air. Hank gripes, Connor comments and she laughs. She glances time and again between that conversation and the book in her hand, leaning back in the chair until she’s slumped half-way to the floor (comfortable, despite everything) so she can pet Sumo and read at the same time.

It all reminds her of a place she hasn’t been in a while: home.

* * *

To Connor, the mall is a colorful mass of variables diluted now only through time and natural degradation -- through the sheer forces of economy. Fewer people are around to buy things. Capital is scarce.

Half of the displays are blank or shorted out while the other half are dull or immobile -- singular bright images blaring _Buy One Get One Half Off_ or  _Bundle up in Winter Fashion_ or _Be Beautiful._ Perfumes, wool coats, ceramic tea sets, models in languid poses against the beach in grainy photos…a strangely empty space where the Cyberlife logo once reigned in blinding white...

It’s easier to sort through, now, anyway, as they exit Linear Wireless with Emma’s new phone. Easy enough that through the buzz of the small crowd, his eyes catch occasionally on certain displays he’d never paid attention to before. A photo of a model in a pea coat carrying a young child on his back, smiling widely as they careen toward a distant, cold sea. A diorama of a family around an old fireplace, children climbing over each other as one woman gifts another a coat. Two people, walking down a snowy path into nowhere, intertwined with a single scarf.

“Someone’s breaking the law over there.”

He turns to Emma, who is grinning at him, eyes dark with what he can only define as mischief. Something in his chest stutters and warms. He realizes: he wasn’t paying attention. He’s stopped at the side of the walkway, staring into a display.

“There you are,” she says.

He blinks away the Mind Palace he didn’t even know he summoned. The photos stop moving. The people stop laughing.

“Did you want to go in?” she says, nodding her head to the storefront. Here is the photo of the couple with the scarf.

“I’m not sure there’s anything for me in there,” he says.

“Oh yeah?” She puts her hands on her hips. “How do you know?”

He looks upon her: Black leggings tucked into black combat boots. A long, dark blue anorak that looks like a hand-me-down cowls around her neck. Her hair is pulled up into a cloud of red coils. Natural.

“I don’t know how to do what you do,” he says.

“Do what?”

“Dress like you.”

She looks down at herself. “Like a hobo?”

[SEARCHING…]

“You do not look like a ‘hobo.’ I’m not sure that term means what you think it means.”

She sputters out a laugh. “You look good. Like damn _always_.” He ignores the flash of pride at that. “You could maybe use a new take on the look...” She gestures to his outfit: a black blazer with dark jeans and a white button up, like he’s always worn since he can ever remember except when he wears his newly minted police uniform. Mostly. With a major exception.

“I don’t know how to...not be like this.” The jacket. The button up. Sometimes a tie…he feels stuck in a loop of thoughts and old programming with no walls to break down. A banal form of entrapment. “It wasn’t in my function to care. Not even when I lost my jacket.”

She instantly flushes a deep red, and he knows for a fact she is not sick or overheating -- meaning, of course, that she is embarrassed. But it sparks a wave of light system diagnostics within _himself_. He resists the errant thought that he could reach out to touch the sudden bloom of color beneath her freckles before he pins a name to the emotion: endearment.

“Do you want it back?” she asks, voice tight.

“No,” he says, with more firmness than he expects.

“Then what?

He sticks his hands in his pockets and looks again at the smiling advertisement. “I just...don’t know what else I could do. How to...change it.”

She crosses her arms and joins him in observing the display. Her brown eyes near glow with warmth under the fluorescent light. Silence hangs between them for a long moment. He can’t expect her to try and fix this. He barely knows where to begin.

“Well,” she says anyway. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re at a mall.”

* * *

“Why did you keep it?” he asks later. They are alone in the quiet dressing room. He pulls on a cream-colored sweater with a scooping neckline, the cashmere soft against his body -- an indulgence Emma insists is part of the process. “Why _really_?”

She keeps her eyes on a men’s wear tablet. The probabilities are low she will say anything at all, and he nearly returns to the changing room before she suddenly speaks. “It had all your numbers on it…I thought...well, I couldn’t just...”

She falls silent.

He sees a flash of understanding -- why he keeps a picture of Sumo on his desk, why he saves the little notes Hank sometimes leaves on his terminal, why he wonders, in this quiet moment in the center of capitalism, how he doesn’t have something of hers to keep for himself.

* * *

“There are meals for you in the freezer that are _not_ hamburgers.”

“I know.”

“And don’t forget your therapy appointment at 3 p.m. on Wednesday.”

“Kid.”

“I’m sorry. But you tend to forget if I do not remind you.”

“Yeah…”

“Thanks for letting her stay here. And for trading cars with her."

“Where was she gonna go, the streets?” A hrumph. “Don’t mention it. I mean that. I’ll finally get some damn peace.”

“...you’ll be alright?”

“I know it’s a fuckin’ shock, but I did live alone without you before and I didn’t die.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“Heh.” A slap on the shoulder. “Just get goin’. Before long I might even miss ya.”

* * *

The safe house is a boxy bungalow on the outskirts of the city that smells heavily of old cigarette smoke and mildew. Salt stains still mar the walkway from when it was last used. Dust cakes the windowsills and flecks of white paint look ready to peel straight from the walls -- a sort of fake exposed brick designer trick that has long since gone bad.

The dark curtains are pulled. The furniture is blocky and bare. It’s fucking terrible.

Emma presses Connor into the couch _(No, just let me do it. You just sit here and stay vigilant or whatever_ ), turns on the television to a movie channel and cleans and cleans and cleans until it stops feeling like a prison. They are an hour into a movie when she realizes that feeling may never pass--

And then she hears Connor laugh.

It’s soft as a wind chime in the spring, but it happened. A single little chuckle, bubbling from surprise. His LED spins yellow in deep thought.

She wipes her forehead. She lays one hand on the back of the couch, watching. It was some remake of a mid 2000s romantic comedy...she had read, actually, that it wasn’t any good. But who cares? Maybe it’s not so bad. If it can make Connor laugh…

“What do you think?” she asks.

“I think I’m figuring it out.”

“I heard you laugh.”

He turns to her, spinning his whole body round to look, eyes wide. He’s wearing one of his new blue sweaters. “I might have.” He tilts his head. “I’ve been thinking,” he says, as if that isn’t obvious. “My memory is not nearly as old as yours. You’ve been alive longer than I’ve had the chance to think of anything at all.”

She blinks. That was a little existential for her taste at the moment.

“So some of these jokes don’t make much sense,” he says. “Two people just kissed for...no reason. Perhaps for the plot.”

She laughs. “How old are you now, anyway?”

His LED spins on. “I was activated in August of 2038.”

She leans down toward him, both hands on the back of the sofa now. “You mean I missed _your first birthday_?”

He observes her unreadably. “I don't believe we celebrated your birthday either…”

She selectively ignores the fact that he, apparently, knows when it is. She pointedly did not talk about it with him before. “I turned 26, who cares. You turned 1!” She’s damn near cackling at the possibilities. “No one got you anything?”

“No. Were they supposed to?”

He says this so curiously that her laughter gets worse.

“Uh, _yeah_. One year of life. That's huge.”

He gives her an uncertain look, like he's not quite sure he believes her, before she vaults over the couch and womps onto its square frame with a wince.

“...that looked painful.”

“Hey, respect your elders.”

And what do you know -- he laughs _again_.

She could live by that, she supposed. Get through another night by that. Think through a puzzle -- what to get the android that wants for nothing, has seen the breadth of the world and yet nothing at all -- by a soundtrack like that.

* * *

The air smells of cut lumber and the blue cold of a late October chill. Emma sits on an orange plastic bucket, drilling holes into a 2x4 installed into a metal scaffold for ease. Her face is smudged with sawdust. It cakes around her goggles, pilling with sweat on her skin. The heating isn’t working right in the gymnasium provided for set up of the Remembrance Ceremony, so she both shivers and glistens in her thick coat.

Her eyes are as focused as Connor had ever seen them.

It is for this reason, he surmises, he is watching her instead of considering forms of analysis for the registration coming in on the androids she had shot.

She stops drilling a moment and he takes his opportunity.

“Why do you like this work so much?” Connor asks.

She pulls her goggles up on her head. It takes her a few moments to respond, as if emerging from a haze. “My job?” Sawdust settles into motes against the sudden emptiness of the air. “It pays. It...makes my thoughts all...straighten out.”

He leans back against the lawn chair currently serving as his look-out post. “Did it concern your parents at all? Your job prospects?”

A shadow passes over her face. “They didn’t really...no. I guess not.” She casts her gaze out into the middle distance, toward her bag of tools sitting on the chair across from her. “They were very...open-minded, I guess.”

An error niggles at his prepared line of questioning -- at her expression, unusually pained. “But androids were replacing humans for this work while you were still young.”

“Sort of.”

“Didn’t they worry?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” A sigh, as if reconsidering. “What do you mean?”

“You…” He blinks a few times, sorting through the processes that led him here, and none of them compute to anything of sense. “I don’t know.”

She shifts in her chair, finally putting down her drill. “Are _you_ worried about me?”

[DEFINITION CATALOGUED.] “I...think it would be ideal for our friendship if you could continue to be employed and have an income.”

She snorts. Her eyes dart away -- a typical signal of her evasiveness. “I’ve always found my way. Maybe y’all rich city folk could afford to keep androids around. But out in the rural Midwest...” She shakes her head. “And, you know, with the revolution...”

She casts him a sly, semi-smirk, but ERRORs pulse in his vision. “You don’t think you’ll be staying in Detroit?” he asks.

“I...don’t know.” He finds it near impossible to read her face at a time when it feels absolutely key that he should. “I’ve not really thought about it.”

His thirium pump is nearly vibrating.  

“Where would you go?” he asks. He’s pleased his voice betrays none of the turmoil happening within.

She gestures outward. “Dunno. Wherever the wind blows, I guess? It’s always been like this.” Why can’t he sort out the variables? Her twitching mouth, her downcast eyes, the freckles _everywhere._ “But it’s gonna be a while. Hey.”

She leans forward against the 2x4, sawdust sloping into her overalls, as she finally meets his gaze.

“I signed on for a two-year stint,” she says. “I got project ideas here. Don’t worry about it.”

He slams his mouth shut. He is not sure which words to use. Sentences struggle to reform. “I was just curious,” he says. It’s a half-baked truth; it’s more than that, but whatever it is, he struggles to understand it. Regret? Sadness? He understands plenty of denotations, but none of the connotations. “I...don’t want to see you fall into poverty.”

She pops the goggles back over her eyes with a single, breathy laugh. “Don’t worry,” she repeats, deadpan. “I’ll live.”

And she continues working like he’d not asked her anything at all, staring into a place he couldn’t access.

* * *

[12:15 P.M.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: Emma, I have a question.

[12:15 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: lol aren’t you in a meeting right now? Wish i could hide texting so well

[12:15 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: i swear i’m sitting out here nicely with North

[12:15 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: oh no she’s looking at me

[12:16 P.M.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: It will be relevant. How would you describe the relationship between androids and humans in rural areas?

[12:16 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: oh you thinking about that still? Lol tell markus i got some ‘opinions’

[12:17 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: cuz it depends i guess. A lot more refurbishing and repairing than replacing so...they stuck around longer?

[12:17 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: awk but like farmers always had things for their tractors and those don’t even have faces you know so androids...come around, do their work, look like a person, act like a person, etc.

[12:17 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: ARE PEOPLE

[12:17 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: sorry you know i feel that way but makin it clear

[12:18 P.M.] Lil.lion lady74: y’all became part of the community. even tho they were takin jobs. And the media...lordt almighty KCN sure did love to drag yall through the mud, ya know?

[12:19 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: man now im really thinkin about this

[12:23 P.M.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: Please continue.

[12:23 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: Sorry, north was getting curious.

[12:24 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: I mean cyberlife in all its glory didnt really make it out where people can’t afford shit. like usual. so the vitriol was there cuz of the media. but on a personal level…the androids people got to know...

[12:25 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: well if someone came after my favorite rk800 model i would ruin their whole dang life :)

[read: 12:25 P.M.]

[12:36 P.M] Lil.lion.lady74: fucker

* * *

Connor’s concern grows as the end of October sets in. She changes as the day: shorter, darker, colder. He finds her sitting awake at odd hours, drawing in a large, red, piece-binded book that she wouldn’t let him look at. Her migraines come in faster waves that debilitate her with frightening suddenness. She sits next to him on the couch at the safe house and falls into such deep silences as they watch TV that he feels afraid to broach the quiet -- like if she opens her mouth, he won’t be able to catch whatever falls out.

“Are you all right?” he asks one evening. Her silence is so heavy he can hardly bear it any longer.

“I’m fine,” she says. Her gaze lands on nothing, even as the reflection of the TV dances in her eyes.

* * *

On a good day, Connor finds himself sitting next to Emma at a bar. She’d cajoled him into letting them attend with no small amount of begging and convincing.

_Can we please get out of the house? I swear I’ll never fight you about where we go again._

_Okay, for two weeks._

_A week. Please?_

He relented mostly out of curiosity -- and because one of the best places to hide someone is in plain sight.

She is wearing his old jacket because that can, apparently, pass as a Halloween costume. People from the Corps come up to her, laughing. _Wow, I can barely tell which one is Connor._

It’s big on her. It folds in all the wrong places and her hands barely make it out of the sleeves. Her face is flushed red and her hair bounces and frizzes with so much life in the musky shade of the bar that it could be gaining sentience. She’s the most unconvincing android he’s ever seen.

He likes that. He likes her in _his_ coat -- a thought he does not have time to devote to unwrapping, here in this dive crowded with humans dressed as angels, devils, demons, cats and characters from television shows he didn’t watch. He has to stay vigilant.

“Which ones are your friends?” he asks once a crowd of women in white gauze departs.

She waves blandly at the gathering, sipping on her third jack and ginger. The bar was rented out specifically for the DVC’s Halloween party, so this answer does not help.

All of the groups stop by her. Some of them ask about her injuries, which Emma waves off as a “construction accident.” All of them ask about her ‘costume’. All of them exclaim variations on _Oh, Emma, when will you be back at our meetings? They’re so boring!_ or _I’m so glad you came back for the party! Have you been sick?_ Or _Have you driven Connor crazy yet?_ (He isn’t sure what to say to that. Emma grins at them all and says _Why don’t you ask him?_ But none of them do.)

“All of them?”

“Sort of?” Her question mark hangs in the air. A smile slips across her face. “I get by. I got lunch buddies. I got people to chat with. I get _by_.” The last word is punctuated with an exaggerated snapping of her mouth.

Connor knows someone else like that.

“You don’t drink near as much as Hank,” he observes, amused, “and yet you are drunk.”

“No,” she says, eyes closed, sipping her drink. “I’m _getting_ there. I’m getting there. I’ve been drinking for ten years. I can’t lose my shit yet.”

“...right. Your misdemeanors.”

“My what now?”

“Well,” he says, mirroring her curious lean into the bar. His nose is only a few inches from her ear; it’s impossible to hear otherwise in this place. “Legally, it is not possible for you to have been drinking for 10 years. You are only 26 years old.”

The Monster Mash blares to life in the background and everyone hollars. The sound is distracting enough that he almost misses the way she turns toward him. He almost misses her fingers brushing against his forehead as they adjust the tiny flop of hair that betrays the rest of his hairline.

A thrill goes up his core processing system, right to his brain. [THREAT DETECTED] flashes in his vision, but it’s mixed with a thrum that both removes the teeth and sharpens the heat of that instinct.

She is nearly laying her head on the bar now, watching him. “I started smoking then, too, or should I not tell you that?”

He frowns, but his language processing is slowed, so he says nothing. A scan reveals no cigarettes on her person or its lingering stains, meaning she must have quit a long time ago, too.

As usual, his diagnostics come back clean.

“Are you gonna write me up?” she asks, smiling. Maybe so. Maybe she’s hacking his system somehow. Poisoning his thirium supply. Maybe.

“Why do humans do this?” he asks.

“Kill ourselves with shit?” she asks in turn. She finally breaks her gaze with him, but he keeps running diagnostics. “Eh. It’s nice to go no bumpers. It takes the edges off. Makes things a little smaller, a little _more_ dangerous. A little _less_...” She reaches a hand out suddenly, fingers toward the sky, as if summoning something to her palm. “Strange.”

“Emma,” he asks. Her hacking is complete. He can’t stop himself from asking anymore than he could stop core programming. “What could convince you to stay in Detroit?”

Her smile is sloppy and she leans in dangerously close, but her eyes are elsewhere. Not on his face, but in that shadowy place she won’t talk to him about. “Wouldn’t _you_ like to know.”

“Yes,” he says intensely. “I would.”

She sighs. She lays her head on her arms, as if contemplating falling asleep on the bar, but it’s an act, he realizes with a hot splash of static. “Something I ain't seen in a while,” she says quietly, so quietly. People scream along with some old mid 2010s song that shakes the bar with its bass, but he tries the best he can to erase it from his auditory sensors. “Something like someone giving a shit where I go.”

Her chin suddenly shakes and he leans over her to hear better -- to block the rest of the world from seeing.

“I’m never where everyone else is,” she says, voice flat. “I’m always...watching them from somewhere else like I can’t _do_ anything about it.”

The heat turns to ice. Instability rankles so many processes that he fears thirium will start coming out of his nose. Because now he wonders, with a jolt, if she can somehow read his thoughts. If she was somehow there with him, inside his head.

“I wish I could change it,” he says, but he isn’t just talking about her anymore.

She takes a big enough breath he can see her back rise to accommodate it. The coat slumps from her shoulders. She sits up and stares into his eyes like they are windows to elsewhere.

“I don’t know how to change it,” she says, as if agreeing with him.

* * *

The very worst day strikes not long after that.

Later, in the moments before he enters low-power mode, he considers the failures that lead to this. If only he had _noticed_.

* * *

She feels like a rabid animal, sitting in Hank’s house. She can’t quite pinpoint the moment that it becomes unbearable, waiting for Connor to return to pick her up like she’s 10-years-old, waiting for her migraine to pass like a sickening wave, but suddenly a switch flips and she can’t sit still anymore. It’s too dark. The TV is too loud. She’s not allowed to be alone anymore and _by God_ , what she would give for some _fucking peace_.

Emma throws as many beers as she can find into the cardboard box. Single-minded. If she strays from this path, she’ll implode all over the floor before she ever gets anywhere. And what good would that do anyone? Even if it didn’t fucking matter, and she’s not convinced it does, she still -- still, here, on the worst night of the year -- has too much pride to collapse in his kitchen.

And she really, really needs to be drunk. Right now.

“What the _hell_ are you doing?”

She ignores Hank.

“What are you doing with my fuckin’ beer?” She puts another in the box. “Hey!”

He pulls her shoulder back. Her self-control snaps, and she shoves Hank back -- a full-throated push against his chest that sends him stumbling backward.

“I’m gonna _fuckin’ drink it all_ , asshole!” she shouts. “You sure don’t need it!”

Maybe it’s something in her expression. Maybe it’s her voice. She’s got her hands curled into fists and she’s ready to fight back, tooth and nail, for the chance to escape the eyes of other people -- except suddenly he’s not looking at her with fury at all, but something worse.

Pity.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” he snaps. It’s not kind. It still feels like exactly _too much_.

She storms out of the house without another word, taking the whole box with her.

* * *

She’s downing beers on old train tracks choked with brown weeds poking through cracks and chipped with rust.

Let it all happen, she figures. Let a train come. It’s all a trick of the light, anyway. Luck is the face of the android, standing stock still beside her with a kind of coldness she’d never understand. His face is placid, but she can see them now -- the tics that mark his fine line between focused and furious. The hands balled into fists, the single wrinkle between his brows, the clenched jaw.

He would be the decider of her fate. And why not? She wasn’t allowed to live, apparently, without him around.

“Emma, I’m going to ask you one more time to come with me.”

“Get fucked,” she says. “I’m not leaving til these beers are gone.”

Not three seconds later, she hears the soft pop of a beer cap and the glug of frothy liquid splashing against the dirt and metal. She spins around to look at him, and he’s staring back, eyes glittering with fury, hand tight around the bottle. He's in his police uniform still, a black coat with yellow stripes on the arm, his badge glinting in the pale light, but in this moment he is all capricious fae, pushed to his limit.

She stands up to snatch the bottle back, but he’s fast and unnatural. He throws it, shattering it against the tracks tens of feet away just as she reaches out for it. He seizes her by the upper arms and stares directly into her eyes.

_A trap._

She struggles to escape his grasp, his grip tight enough that it’ll likely leave bruises in the morning, but her kicks prompt no response and her hands land uselessly against his chest.

“We’re leaving,” he says tightly.

“No,” she cries out.

“Stop this. This isn’t healthy behavior.”

“Go _away_ ” Her voice is raw. “I just want _to be alone_!”

“No, you don’t!” he shouts back just as fiercely. He shakes her once. She takes a sharp breath inward as if she had just been stabbed. “You’re angry because they’re gone. You poisoning yourself with alcohol or getting hit by a train won’t change that tonight. It won’t change it _ever_.”

She stares into his eyes, afraid of what she’ll find there. But there’s no answer except his cold truth. They died seven years ago today and the day still reveals nothing. Not of who they were. Not of who they might have become.

Not of who she would have been, if they were still here.

Her eyes burn. “Would you even fucking be here if it wasn’t your goddamn mission?”

“That question isn’t _relevant_ ,” he snaps, and it dawns on her, in the distant part of her head that’s retained any sense of logic, that maybe she pushed him too far this time. “Too many variables are at play.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Would you have _let me_ get to know you like this? If it wasn’t for this _mission_?”

The implosion finally, finally begins. She can feel it in her ribs, tugging at her body like a black hole, ripping her apart from within. This is why she couldn’t go to her aunt or uncle. They couldn’t understand it -- not the depth at which she had lost everything.

“No,” she says, voice shaking. It’s too real. “I’m just gonna drive you away. I don’t know _how to not be this way,_ Connor. I wish I--”

Her throat closes around her words. He watches her, eyes shining.

“Why are you here?” she chokes out.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Why not?” she says. “Everyone else does. Everyone else _forgets_ ,” she says bitterly, so bitterly her tears spill out, burning like acid, aching in her chest, tearing out pieces of her like glass from a wound. Breath comes in jagged drags. She sobs, like a volcano giving its last.

“Tell me what to do, Emma,” Connor says softly, so softly she is surprised she can hear it through her hiccupping sobs. “How can I fix this?”

“Just give me...give me…”

He’s already leaning down to stare her in the eyes, close enough their foreheads are almost touching. His hands rest now on her shoulders, thumbs against her neck. “Anything,” he says.

“Just give me a minute.”

She leans into him. She presses her forehead into the spot between his neck and his shoulder. Her fingers curl in against his chest, gripping his black shirt, and she finally lets the bomb finish its work. Her legs nearly give out from under her. But she remains standing because of him. Because of his arms, circled around her with the lightness of a feather.

His uncertainty mingles with her sureness that she didn’t, in this life or any other, deserve him.

* * *

She's lying on the pavement now outside Hank’s house. Lets the cool asphalt bring her back to earth.

“Tell me about them,” Connor says, lying next to her, as if to try and see what she saw in the clear sky.

And so she does. About being adopted, about their life in quiet midwestern towns, about the way people would look at them strangely -- a biracial daughter who looked nothing like her parents.

She tells him about the year her father had to work in Korea without them and how terrible it was to only ever see him in snatches of time stolen from crappy video phones. About how her mother tried to hide her quiet sobs alone in the kitchen while washing dishes.

About his return home, and how strongly he hugged her, like he was whole again.

About how her parents insisted she knew how to defend herself, about their talks behind closed doors about androids and money. About the jobs they had and the game they played with names. In every town, a different name. She knows now, of course, that isn’t normal -- but the game faded with time.

(“They have no criminal record,” Connor assures her. But the mystery, one of many, still remains.)

And she told him about the favorite foods and the grocery runs and the ‘I love yous’, the constant ‘I love yous’, not five minutes after shouting at her for throwing a tantrum in a Walmart, not five minutes after telling her to get up again from another spar -- like she was their flash in the pan, and if they didn’t say it she’d disappear from right out underneath them. It all spills out, frothy as beer in a bottle, but he’s listening and for once in her goddamn life she just lets it happen.

She lets him listen until she has no words left.

He turns his head toward her. “Did they think you would forget? That they loved you?”

She is stilled into silence a moment. “Why would you say that?” she asks.

“Why did they always say it?” His LED spins in thought. “Did they need to?”

She watches the unmoving stars. “No.” Her voice is nearly gone. “That’s just what you do when you love someone, is all.”

* * *

The darkness in her eyes fades away slowly after that, like the sun rising in Hank’s windows, just as she said it would. She’s back to laughing with him about things on the television at night. She’s back to that specific, vivid way she speaks -- all hands moving everywhere, slang he sometimes has to look up, curses sprinkled jovially throughout.

He assumed, at the beginning of the assignment, that he would understand humanity even more clearly after a long period of direct observation with a more willing observee (Hank’s patience was highly limited). But, in fact, the opposite has happened.

He’s mystified.

The ways she forms her thoughts through the miasma of memories stored in her head. How she maneuvers the scars of a strange past, moving toward a future that has no guarantees. The illogical nature of emotion and how it can plunge one into deep depths or high peaks seemingly at the flip of a coin. There’s so much mess in a human mind. How do they function at all? How are they not always throwing themselves on the train tracks, drinking until they die? How did Hank make it this far? How did she?

And then she starts asking more about _him_.

They’re sitting in matching chairs in that old gymnasium, taking a break from building one of the sets for the remembrance ceremony. She takes a long swig from her water bottle and sighs. “Remember when you asked me why I’m a carpenter?”

“Of course.”

“Well.” She leans back in her chair. “Why are you a detective?”

“That’s my primary function,” he says immediately. “That is the job I was built to perform.”

“Okay,” she says, as if conceding a point, “sure. But was Markus built to be Speaker of the Androids?”

Connor looks to the half-built stage. The air has that fresh-cut wood smell. “Conspiracy theories on the internet claim he may have been,” he says.

“Heh. Yeah, I’ve read those. He’s certainly good-looking enough…” She raises an eyebrow at him. He narrows his eyes in thought. “Whatever. Not the point. North _definitely_ wasn’t built to lead his bodyguard division.”

He tilts his head toward her. “Yes. What are you getting at?”

“Haven’t you ever thought about it? Ever...imagined yourself doing something else?”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Because you can?”

He purses his lips. Uncertainty roils between his processing components. “Do you...imagine yourself doing something other than carpentry?”

She turns away a moment with a ‘hmm’ sound, gaze cast down in thought. She rises from the chair and hesitates for only a moment before pulling the red-bound book -- the one she’d been taking notes in -- from her work bag, pressing loose papers and fabric pieces back within its pages.

She sets it on his lap. It’s unwieldy and strange...a physically bound book that wasn’t bound well at all. “Don’t laugh,” she says before flopping back in her lawn chair. She leans in toward him as he lays a hand on top of the book.

[FAKE LEATHER. APPROXIMATELY 10 YEARS OLD?]

He cracks it open and a few folded papers fall out. Two swatches of fabric -- a lace with flowers sewn in and a deep red, glittery tulle -- are taped to the side of the page. The rest of the page is taken up by various sketches of Greco-roman columns, old wooden trellises and a bench on a stage marked with measurements.

“I’ve designed stages in my head since I saw my first play at 12,” Emma says. “Dad got me that one when I was...ah, 16 maybe?”

He touches the page, yellowed with age, and flips to another. Sharp balconies oversee a simple set, where splotches of light are colored in with blue pencil...

She shrugs. “I was gonna go to school for it but then...” She trails off, but he knows what comes next. Instead, she’s suddenly over his shoulder, chin close to his ear, flipping the pages for him. “This is half the fun for me. Imagining it. You ever done something like that?”

He turns the pages over in his head, wondering. He lays a hand on the page of the garden set, palm on the scratchy tulle.

“I suppose I haven’t,” he says.

Her hair brushes the side of his face as she closes the book, and he feels a warmth flash through him. He feels purposeful in a way he hasn’t since the disappearances case began. “Do you like what you do?” she asks.

[PROCESSING ERROR. INCOMPLETE??&&&] “I...don’t know how to answer that.”

“What _do_ you like to do?”

Read books. Watch movies with her or Hank. These answers are obvious past-times that would function in most other conversations of this type. They would not, he gets the feeling, work this time. He hears Simon in his head: _Then back to the DPD for you, if that’s what you want._

“I’m not sure,” he admits. His regulator shakes for a few long moments. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

* * *

[7:06 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: hey indulge my random thought

[7:06 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: im bored at Hank’s waiting for u to come home like some dumb uwu broad.

[7:06 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: keep that in mind before you keep me on read.

[7:06 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: what do you think would happen if i tried to HAIT interface with you? Are you afraid you would die? Of embarrassment?

[7:08 P.M.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: That’s impossible. Also, I should confiscate those from you.

[7:08 P.M.] Lil.lion.lady74: Embarrassed, got it ;)

[7:09 P.M.]CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: You really should not have them. Why do you insist on trying to use them?

[read: 7:09 P.M.]

[7:25 P.M.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: I understand now why this behavior frustrates you.

* * *

Who does he want to be?

What does that _mean_?

Connor is at the kitchen table, pencil in hand hovering over a blank sheet of white paper, ready to _imagine_ , if that’s what it takes, but he finds himself at an utter loss. The blankness feels fitting and thus, intimidating. Perhaps he isn’t much more than this. Perhaps he’ll never be more than just the potential to be something. Maybe nothing in his life can ever stick.

He closes his eyes.

[THREAT DETECTED. ERROR.]

There is one place that sticks.

 _There’s nothing there, anymore. I have nothing to fear._ But such thoughts do little to slow the speeding of his regulator, the sour static bunching in his abdomen like a balloon. The zen garden lives within him, somewhere. The frost of Her anger still lingers. Her final command, haughty and triumphant, still sends him to a place he wishes he’d never seen.

He places the pencil down hard on the paper.

He wishes it _destroyed_.

The pencil moves. He gives life to Her perfect rose bushes, freeing them from their trellis; they spill out like a thousand drops of blood, a thousand little thorns. The willows weep into the water, forming curtains of soft growth. Wildflowers sprout around the old trees and across the perfect white paths, webbing the walkway in swatches of pink and violet. He breaks down the asymmetrical columns into fallen gravestones smothered in moss. The water, disturbed by a single fountain of blue light...a sparkling flutter of tulle petals across its surface…

And then...someone else, waiting for him there…supplanting Amanda forever. Erasing her from within while laughing, a hammer in hand. _My god this place is a fuckin’ mess…_

One day, maybe, he’ll tell her of this place...when she isn’t snoring on the couch, muttering softly in her sleep.

When he knows, with 100% certainty, that it won’t drive her away.

* * *

“You’re distracted,” North says to him.

He’d left Emma at Hank’s, her dark eyes heavy with sleep. They’d just watched her favorite movie and he can’t stop thinking about it -- or the way her face opened up like a night flower, soft and bright, as she offered to watch it with him. _It’s old animation but...I dunno, I think you’ll like it._

The movie was violent and vivid -- ancient Japan depicted in beautiful, painted landscapes and flashes of blood and gore. Anger and fear near decimated the history of an entire land but for a man and a woman on two sides of the conflict. The man, cast out and lost, sought peace even for those that had reason to despise him in order to end a hateful curse. The woman, furious and lovely, was between two worlds, stuck in a nowhere place, yet she fought tooth and nail for the ones that chose to love her, for the chance to live a life of her own choice...

The two found connection in that -- and it saved the whole world.

Something ticks in the back of his processors, overriding his politeness protocols in some respects. He’s _annoyed_ , he realizes in a flash.

“It’s late,” he says.

“That’s never bothered you before,” she says.

“My schedule is no longer dictated by just where I want to go.”

“Your job is more important,” she says, a little dismissively for his tastes. “Don’t let her get in the way of that.”

He knows North is trying to protect him. But he can say nothing else to that; she’s far too late, in that regard.

Markus, Josh and Simon are of course present within the Speaker’s home -- with Kamski himself over video call, discussing what’s been gathered so far on the case, which just makes Connor feel angrier. Was this all called for Kamski’s sake?

He sits and listens in silence, thoughts unruly.

_“Are they in love?” he asks at the end of film, but he knows the answer. He just wants to hear her say it._

_“Oh, yeah,” Emma says. The heat in his chest grows until he sees [RECOMMEND SYSTEM COOLING] flash in his vision. “The wolf goddess said he wanted to spend his life with her, remember?”_

He blinks. Now Josh is talking about the company attached to the androids’ registrations, which had been near buried, anyway. Connor had not recognized the name of the company -- BioMecca LLC. No background in android development, and certainly no interest in back-engineering thirium. Suspicious enough on its own, but a dead-end until more research could be done.

“That’s because it’s fake,” Kamski says, when Connor explains as much. “A cover company. I should have guessed.”

That’s when Connor starts paying more attention.

“It was like one of those Russian dolls. One in another in another in another,” Josh explains. “I ran searches on searches on names attached to official filings. It was buried as hell. But then...landed on this.” A name pops up on the screen next to Kamski’s large face. “Genesis Biotech.”

Connor sits up. “One of the investor’s resumes has that name on it. Carisa Cho.” She’s not there anymore, but it showed up in a background check at some point. A defunct, pre-Cyberlife institution that collapsed when Kamski cornered the game.

“She’s one of the venture capitalist types, right?” Simon says. Connor nods to him. “Is she one of the ones with an implant?”

“Nothing registered,” North says.

They had a few in the cohort that enjoyed strange forms of self-experimentation. Nano-tech, implants, the like. Not horribly uncommon among the too-rich set.

“I’m no detective, but that sounds fishy to me,” Kamski says over the video call. In fairness, the man does sound exhausted, even if that statement was a specific dig at Connor. “Perhaps it will come as no surprise, but these thirium readings...they make no _sense_. It’s backward engineered, but the bio markers are all off. The blood’s ability to send signals is disrupted, like it will only answer to a few forms of specific input. This is some Invasion of the Borg level bizzarity. On top of a complete violation of my patent.”

[SEARCHING…]

Leave it to Kamski to make a reference no one else in the room would know offhandedly.

“That would severely limit their functionality,” Connor says.

Kamski smirks, large as the whole world on Markus’s wall. “But perhaps...it would make them more malleable to command. No risk of deviancy whatsoever.”

“And…” Josh clears his throat. “The reason we are all meeting in person or triple encrypted video call is because someone else has been snooping in our files on the disappearances. Or _trying_ to. With increased urgency, I should say. I fight off hacking attempts near weekly but that’s just how it is.”

“Any suspicions?” Simon asks.

“It’s all disguised through multiple VPNs, but the signature is strange. It could be anyone.”

_“Why didn’t they remain together at the end, then?”_

_“Because this isn’t one of your romantic comedies.” She grins in teasing, but something in her eyes makes it clear the line of questioning unsettles her. “They’re connected forever. But they got more at stake than just themselves, ya know?”_

Thoughts swarm like flies. Sorting priority is like walking through mud.

Markus finally leans forward, done processing everyone’s input. “Find everything you can on this investor,” he says to Josh and Connor. “And Josh, let’s talk to the ones with implants. They’re … touchy about stuff like this. But I’m sure I can smooth it over.”

“Doesn’t seem like much,” Josh admits.

“It’s our best lead so far,” Connor says.

Simon taps the table a few times. “The coincidences pile up. We pull one string and it just keeps going and going…”

Connor looks to the floor. The thrill of the chase is tempered by something else -- a vague and unending disquiet.

* * *

Connor comes home to Hank’s place, like old times ( _home_ , he thinks, with no small amount of warmth). Sumo sniffs and headbutts cheerfully at his hand as he enters.

He spots a rectangular gift box wrapped in shiny red paper on the unusually immaculate dining table, as if prepared especially for him to notice. The note on the box confirms it -- addressed directly to him, in a nickname only two people use:  _Con_.

_This is thanks and also I’m sorry._

_For missing your birthday...your...start up day? I’ll refer to it however you want. And for how awful I was to you in the days before the Terrible Anniversary. You didn’t deserve that. I just don’t know how to cope with it yet_ ~~_all by myself. But I guess I wasn’t really by myself._~~ _I didn’t have to be by myself._

_I saw the drawing you made of that mysterious garden. I know you tried to hide it in the trash but I rescued it. It was really something. I’d never seen a place like that before. I’d like to see more like it, if that’s what you got going on inside your head._

_You can use this for whatever you want. Writing, drawing, maze puzzles, shit in binary, honestly whatever. Whatever helps you sort through everything. You just have to promise me one thing: you’ll use it for all the imaginary stuff you come up with and not for work. I swear to god if I see you writing in this for work I will throw it in the garbage._

_(I didn’t pay for it. Hank did. He didn’t want me to tell you that but he felt soooo bad he didn’t realize it was like your birthday. I might have guilted him a little. It’s fine. Don’t tell him you know!)_

_I know things don’t always make sense to you. Sometimes I look at you with the other androids and I can see that you...you get all formal. You don’t fit in with them do you?_

_I get it, though. I’m not an android but...I get it._

_It seems easier to be alone in the moment. But it never really is._

_I’ve got you. As long as you need._

_-Emma_

He holds the note in his hands so tightly he leaves wrinkle marks. He reads it, over and over again, until he almost forgets to open the present itself. He tears at the paper as quietly as he can, as if afraid to break this silent moment alone in the kitchen with just Sumo and these words, before seeing it: a small, leather-bound book with a tiny dog on the front. Full of blank pages. Full of promise.

And in the middle, his original drawing -- folded neatly inside.

He blinks a few times before he realizes he’s crying.

* * *

“I don’t think I can do this anymore, Hank.”

“Do what? Your job?”

“I have a conflict of interest.”

“That...being?”

A heavy silence in response.

Hank sighs. “Your job is to keep her safe and find the people who did this. It’s not a conflict of interest to care about her.”

“Hank. _No_.” It’s breathless, almost, that no.

Hank softens. “What?”

“What if I have to choose? I already failed her once because I didn’t notice something thanks to work--”

“When was this?”

“Her parents and their--”

“That wasn’t your fault, Con.”

“But what if it happens the other way around? What if I lose something on the case because I’m thinking about her?”

“Is that even possible for you? Don’t you have like quintuple fuckall processing ability?”

“Yes, it’s possible, _Hank_ !” Connor nearly rises from his chair. “All of my prioritization protocols are _broken_! If it came between doing something for the mission or her, I would choose her. _Every time_. In _every_ calculation!”

“Son, listen to me.”

Connor takes in a sharp breath.

“You’ve always been making calculations like this,” Hank says. “Since I met you. Do you regret the decisions you’ve made? Do you regret saving my life? Do you?”

Connor covers his face. “It’s different now,” he says. “I see _all_ the risks.”

A long pause.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hank says. “It’s finally getting to you.”

“What is?”

“The weight of _giving a shit_.”

* * *

Snow falls in soft sheets, bright against the dark of night. Connor sits in a chair by the back window at their strange little house, wearing one of Hank’s old Detroit police hoodies and a set of sweats that Emma found deep in Hank’s closet. She hands Connor a warm mug to hold -- hot chocolate -- because he always gets a little more insular when he watches the snow fall. And she sits down in the chair next to him.

They sit in companionable silence, shoulder to shoulder, knees nearly touching. She feels warm inside and out despite the darkness within and without their little abode. She’s so content it makes the seed of doubt finally take root -- as if waiting for the opportunity to spoil her weird little happiness when first given the chance.

“Listen,” she says, as if she has to ask him. As if he wasn’t always listening, somehow. He tilts his face down toward her and her pulse quickens. “If I had to leave Detroit, would we still be friends?”

He’s so unusually casual -- he’s even letting his shoulders slump a little bit. “Yes,” he says, with great certainty. “It wouldn’t change that.”

“It does change _some_ things.”

“A few.”

Her ribs squeeze her lungs. “We wouldn’t be able to do this anymore.” She sticks her nose in her hot chocolate mug like the heat can save her from this. “Who knows...after you solve this case…”

“You may not know this about androids,” he says, in a haughty tone that says _you do know this,_ “but we have a hard time forgetting things.”

She can’t look at him because it feels like too much, all over again. “It’s not like I’d forget you,” she says. “That’s not what I mean.”

“I know,” he says.

“Okay,” she says, because what else do you say to that.

“Emma.” She can feel him turn entirely toward her. “I’ve got _you_. We’re _connected_.”

She chances a look his way and his smile sends white spots to her eyes. He’s teasing her. Showing off his memory of all the random shit she’s ever said. That’s it. Obviously. He wouldn’t step over the carefully constructed lines of his life now. He wouldn’t take risks like that, not on accident. That’s not how it goes with Connor Anderson, model number #313 248 317. He doesn’t fuck up. He doesn’t yell at her because his chemical emotions and years out of therapy muck up his ability to process.

He doesn’t steal her things (ostensibly for her own good, sure, _at first_ ) and keep them out of a flash of loneliness and _want_ so complete that he’s reduced to sobbing in his living room holding an old lambda to his chest.

“Nice,” she says, voice steady despite herself. If she said anything else, it would all come out at once and she couldn’t, in this life or the next, abide fucking up that bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to the Jericho discord for putting up with my BS and listening to me yell about this constantly as well as inundate me with your brilliant headcanons. y'all give me life.


	7. from the tempest, from the sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did she hurt you?” he asks. He fears the answer. [SCANNING…]
> 
> “Stop it.” She swats at him like he’s a bothersome fly. Wincing? “Nothing happened.”
> 
> [LIE DETECTED.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case it isn’t clear by now, I’m awful at names. I mixed up the name of the investor last chapter (she had almost the exact same name as the aunt!) -- it’s been fixed.
> 
> I mean i did accidentally name my main character after The Hostage so i guess maybe expectations shouldn’t be too high in that regard lol.
> 
> CW: some minor/medium body horror. Rating has increased to reflect it.

_Have you ever thought about what he thinks about you?_

Yeah, that was a fuckin’ mistake. Her face still burns even as she sits in the warm evening light of the Speaker’s gardens. What was she thinking, asking _Hank_? Her brain had been sloshing in something akin to downers because Connor’s million questions hadn’t yet arrived today. For good reason: he was busy. He had a job. But the air around her felt dead without them, and it made her feel _stupid_.

Whatever!

_I make a point not to. About anyone. That’s a young person’s game._

She places her hands on the cool stone bench at the memory, watching over the shrubbery garden wall to the main road. She tries to think of anything else. Lists of materials for tonight's project roll through her head. Cars pass by lazily. Some woman stands out front texting on some device, mostly obscured by her car parked a few tens of feet away from the house front. Likely a neighbor on a smoke break or enjoying the last bit of semi-temperate fall air.

_I mean...how the android brain…forget it._

Hank had just cast her a sidelong glance at that, his smile rusty.

She crosses her arms and continues to watch the woman out in the street, mostly out of curiosity. People didn’t mill about on this road, which struck Emma as a deeply Rich Person thing to do. Take over the prettiest streets and then never spend any time outdoors.

_Wait._

Emma sits up. The woman steps away from the car, and breath rushes into Emma’s lungs.

The woman who stared at her at the meeting…

In an instant, their eyes connect. Emma rises from her seat, heart flying.

“Hey!” Emma says loudly.

She expects the woman to ignore her. Maybe run. Maybe spout an obscenity or flip her off. Emma could have dealt with that. Emma could have dealt with suspicion or crudeness or anger.

But the woman smiles, like she'd just seen the dawn.

* * *

[NOTIFICATION: 1 TEXT FROM: HANK.ANDERSON.88]

[READING TEXT…]

[4:13 P.M.] hank.anderson.88: Emma’s with you.

Connor feels something inside him click together -- a cache of information finally slipping into the correct folder. He blinks the text away, waiting for the last of the investors to arrive to begin their meeting.

[4:14 P.M.] hank.anderson.88: she’s starting to ask weird questions…

He schools his features into nothingness.

[4:14 P.M.] hank.anderson.88: not my fuckin business but fyi

<A few are missing,> whispers North’s voice in his head. He glances down to her, standing at attention on the other side of the walkway in the Manfred mansion’s open parlor. She meets his gaze, raising an eyebrow ever so slightly.

<One or another always runs late,> he replies. <We expected some pushback after Markus’s announcement.>

She adjusts her stance ever so slightly, settling her gaze pointedly on Markus and Simon, together at the head of the table. Her expression softens slightly, even if her words do not. <We run on _their_ schedules, _still_. It’s ridiculous. >

Something like recognition rings inside him. North has come a long way, but there’s still so much outside her control.

<It is frustrating,> he concedes.

Connor watches the group settle around the table. This meeting was the first after Markus announced they would be inquiring into implant usage for security reasons regarding the investigation. But Markus had rejected Connor’s requests to send a tail after Carisa Cho just yet. He’d been worried about the risks -- about spreading the poison of suspicion too far too soon.

It strikes him how much he doesn’t want to be here, either.

<I’ll go check messages and cameras,> Connor says, wondering where he might find Emma wandering about _this_ time, what she had asked Hank that made him so--

<No,> North says, lip curling up as Markus shakes someone's hand. <You need to keep an eye on them. I’ll do it.>

[%&^*&INCORRECT PRIORITIZATION?]

Connor blinks furiously a few times to combat the red unease flickering to life across his vision. But he resumes his watchful gaze as Markus begins thanking the investors for coming. It is as Hank said -- he would have to learn to let it go. He can’t do everything. He can stand here, now, and do his job and let North do hers. And that’s enough.

His hands squeeze together hard enough behind his back he sees warnings.

* * *

Emma stomps to the entrance of the garden, but something about the woman’s speed prompts her to back pedal. She’s like a magnet, zooming toward its opposing pole.

Emma’s feet stutter in place over the soft grass before she opts to settle for a defensive posture -- feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent, hands clenched into fists. She’s still safely within the confine of the garden, but able to do little but watch the woman’s unnatural approach.

“Do I know you?” Emma demands.

The woman is garbed in a black pea coat and wide-leg grey slacks, hair pulled into a perfectly silken ponytail. Her hands are hidden in pockets. Her heels click against the pavement like a clock. “I’ve heard you’ve been in some trouble,” she calls back.

All too quickly, they stand nearly toe-to-toe just within the shrubbery wall. The woman’s eyes gleam like oiled obsidian in the evening light, watchful and sharp. She extends a leather-gloved hand. “My name is Carisa.”

Emma flicks her gaze to the hand but does not take it. “I bet you already know my name.”

The woman’s smile is so brittle it shatters on the spot. “I just want to talk,” she says, voice strained beneath the weight of something Emma can't see. “And we’re scaring the guards.”

Emma glances back at the navy and white individuals posted at the front door -- UN peacekeepers semi-commanded by North.

“So what?” Emma mutters. Maybe they should be paying attention. She begins reaching for the phone in her pocket.

“I need to talk to you. Alone.” The woman anxiously tugs at her leather glove. Emma tilts her head in thought. What did Carisa want so badly she was willing to risk the ire of the UN and her android bodyguards?

But the thought is a distraction. Carisa’s hand suddenly shoots out and seizes Emma by the wrist.

Carisa laughs breezily, a performance for the guards. It slips from the woman’s mouth with such ease that fear slides down Emma’s back like ice water. “Oh, Emma, it's been so long since I've seen you!”

Something tingles just beneath her skin, starting where Carisa’s fingers wrap around her wrist. Her vision tunnels. A wild screeching starts in her head, like an alarm--

[A L E R T]

                      [A L E R T]

                                ...and suddenly it’s a fire, hot and cauterizing, a migraine

                                    where stars nova in the black rings around her vision…

                                                [W e have to g o d ar l i ng]

“You’re really--” Carisa whispers, and Emma can’t move. The electricity sweeps her body. Surely she’s screaming, set alight with flame, but no -- she hasn’t moved a muscle, can’t move a muscle. An electrocution stretched over a moment like nylon. Carisa yanks Emma forward, smiling like her teeth could drip blood.

And in an instant its over, the pain only a wisp of a memory in the back of her eyes. Emma takes in a single shaky breath. Carisa lets her arm go. A wind chime sounds from far away.

Carisa begins to step away.

 _Oh,_ fuck _no._

She grabs Carisa by the shoulders, pulling her close as if for an embrace. With Carisa in heels, they’re the same height and their gazes match.

“What the fuck did you just do?” Emma asks. She feels the fire building in her skull, the auras of another migraine calling, and she _relishes_ the fear that enters Carisa’s eyes, if only for a moment.

“I knew your parents.” Their faces are close enough that the breath from her words brushes Emma’s face. The woman is beautiful, Emma realizes, in the way porcelain is. Unmarred. Flawless...the face of someone who’s never seen what it’s like to lose everything.

“Fuck you,” Emma says. But she doesn’t let go.

“Shara always sung that song,” Carisa says quietly, voice shaking. Her plaster smile flakes. Crow’s feet crack through her pale makeup. “‘You are my sunshine,’ but we never knew to who. Her computers, maybe. She was a fucking genius.”

Something scratches at Emma’s memory. She tightens her grip around Carisa’s arms. The woman’s eyes twitch.

“Ji-hun...he was brilliant, too. Collected old weapons for some reason. Always _laughing_.”

“When?” Emma says. Her heart is beating so hard her whole body shakes. The curiosity is damn near painful. _Don’t be stupid, Emma, don’t be an_ idiot. “They...they didn’t have friends.”

“They _didn’t_ ,” she agrees, with a ferocity that forces Emma to lean backward a moment.

“What do you want?”

“Meet with me. There’s so much--”

Emma’s hands slide down to Carisa’s wrists as the woman tries to pull away. “You aren’t going anywhere.” Her eyes narrow, but she keeps her voice low. “We’re talking right here, right now.”

“It’s not _safe_ here.”

“Shut up,” Emma says. “It’s the Speaker’s residence.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Carisa hisses. “You have no idea who could be listening.”

“That’s true, Ms. Cho.” A new voice, pitching with barely concealed rage. “So why don’t you tell us? Who _is_ listening?”

Emma whirls around. Carisa yanks her hand out of Emma’s grip.

North. A shadow against the entrance to the garden -- impeccable, straight-backed, hand on a gun at her waist. The UN guards are gone, dismissed by the tigress in all black.

“I could have you arrested right now,” North continues, stepping toward them.

Carisa takes an involuntary step back, but her eyes return to stone. “For opting out of a meeting?”

“For harassing Ms. Ibori. For your connections to the investigation of the disappearances.”

Emma feels her stomach flip as Carisa’s facade falls completely. Her eyebrows knit together and her lips curl into something akin to a snarl. “What’s your proof? My _resume_? Is that it?”

This time, North is the one who stutters to a stop. Her fingers tighten around the gun, ready to pull it free. “How do you--”

“You don’t know anything,” Carisa snaps. “I’m trying to fix that.” Slowly, she reaches for her pocket, other hand up in the air to signal innocence. Emma’s fingers twitch toward a phantom bag, where her own gun would be, but they meet nothing but her coat pocket. “Arrest me, and you’ll piss off every person in that house. _Shoot_ me and you ruin everything your darling Markus is trying to do. Is that what you want, North?”

Carisa pulls out a harmless business card.

Emma’s heart thunders in her ears as North’s gun clicks fully back into its holster. Carisa hands Emma the old card, reading _Blue Sky Ventures_. It feels willowed and wrinkled, like it had pruned in water. Ink smudges on her fingers; an address was written on the back in pen.

“We have one chance to get this right,” Carisa says, voice low. “I’ll tell you what I know. About your parents. About the investigation. But only if you’re there. Otherwise, I’ll drag you through an army of lawyers before I say another word, and we might both be dead by then.”

Emma’s nails dig into her palms. Panic froths in her chest, pressing out logical thought and normal breath. She searches Carisa’s gaze, but finds nothing but old resolution -- a thin, wavering line of desperation, honed into steel.

North sighs, frustration so clear it nearly sounds like a growl. “Either go join the meeting or leave the premises.”

She gives another brittle smile, as if North hadn’t nearly pulled a gun on her moments before. “Let’s try and look good for the security cameras, then, hmm?”

Something clicks in Emma’s head. Was someone watching them right now? Through the security cameras? Through Carisa’s eyes? She lets Carisa walk away without another word, frozen in thought.

Frozen while remembering the _burning_. The _warnings_.

She’s so trapped by the thought spiral that she nearly jumps when North speaks next.

“Let’s go inside,” North says, with a shocking softness. “Connor won’t let me hear the end of this.”

The words are chiding. But there’s something of approval in her tone, too.

“How long were you watching?” Emma mutters.

“Long enough.” North’s cold mask breaks into a small, perhaps unwilling, smile. “You don’t know how to just walk away from something, do you?”

* * *

Connor gestures Emma toward the chair right next to him at the kitchen island, ready to engage her in a battle of wills if that is what it takes. And for a moment it seems a battle may be inevitable; she stares back at him blankly, jaw clenched, body held taut as if trying to hold something back. She looks like one ready to dig herself out of somewhere deep.

He fights the burgundy flash of anxious fury that ripples across his processors. That something had happened in the moments he’d been elsewhere…

[INCORRECT PRIORITIZATION!?*&*]

 _You talk her through this one,_ North said, earlier. _I don’t think you’re going to like it._

But she does relent. She flops up into the tall chair next to him with a beleaguered sigh. He remains standing and leans an arm atop the island, leaning in toward her, close enough that her shoulder could brush his chest. The smell of dead autumn leaves and her usual lavender soap still clings to her hair. He pushes a glass of water and three painkillers her way.

“You have a migraine coming on,” he says. He can tell in the slight slowing of her movements, the way she squints her eyes.

“Well, yeah,” she says quietly, in her usual tone of deflection. Her fingers wrap around the glass. “I was just ambushed by some fucking lady.”

“You did some of the ambushing, to hear North tell it.”

“Ha ha.”

She does smile, somewhat, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Warnings made of garbled code flash in his vision.

“Did she hurt you?” he asks. He fears the answer. [SCANNING…]

“Stop it.” She swats at him like he’s a bothersome fly. Wincing? “Nothing happened.”

[LIE DETECTED.]

“Shit,” she mutters, catching his severe look. She rubs her eyes with her hands, leaning back. “Okay. Okay. Something happened. She…”

She trails off. Something ticks in his systems and he leans ever so slightly closer. He doesn't see any injuries, her surface vitals are normal and there are no signs of tears, but the sense of wrongness persists.

“She scanned me,” she says, realizing. “She _scanned_ me. How is that possible?”

He blinks, processing that. “How would you even know that she did?”

“Uh.” She crosses her arms across her chest as if protecting herself. Her cheeks redden slightly. “I know you scan me sometimes and I can...uh, feel it? Like a tingling under my skin or the beginning of a headache. It took me a little bit to figure it out.”

His thirium regulator produces an [ERROR] signal for a moment. “Most humans do not.”

“Yeah, well...I do.” She shifts in her chair and he leans back to give her space. “It doesn’t really bother me. I don’t notice it most of the time, but...when she grabbed my wrist...it felt...” She takes in an involuntary breath. “Much worse.”

“Invasive,” he says, confirming.

She raises her eyebrows in assent and looks to ceiling, unable to meet his gaze.

A puzzle piece slots in but it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He rises to a full standing position. “You aren’t going,” he says, though he knows this is illogical. He doesn’t know how to work through these warnings in a timely fashion and still maintain a standard conversational rhythm.

“Yes. I _am_.” She looks at him, gaze firm. “If you want to solve this thing, I have to go. That’s what she said.”

“She must have an unregistered implant, which is highly illegal. And likely dangerous.”

“Do you have any other leads right now?”

It is his turn to turn away. “No,” he admits. “But why does she need _you_ there?”

“I…” She places her elbow on the table and rests her head in her palm. “She knew...things. About my parents. That I’ve never…” Her breath stutters. “I don’t know.”

He finally places his arm on the back of her chair just as she leans into it. He feels as though he’s bracing the both of them there, together, as they lose this game of chess against Carisa Cho. “She probably wants you there as leverage. So that we all cooperate.”

“Maybe,” she admits. “But we can’t not take this chance.”

This paradox of missions parameters -- protecting Emma while she does something good for the investigation, clearly necessary for her ongoing struggle, and explicitly unsafe for her wellbeing -- would have to be sorted out at a later date.

“Promise that you'll listen to me,” he says softly.

She says nothing. She downs the pills, all three at once, gulping down water, but she leans against his arm purposefully enough that it feels like acquiescence.

* * *

A quiet waiter in a black vest leads Connor and Emma to the back of the Autumn Grove, a small restaurant in a part of Detroit that had once been gentrifying. Now it is a strange jewel in a dim part of town where uncertainty still reigned and streets remained empty.

Whoever designed this place saw light as a precious resource, shining only from simple pinpoints in the ceiling or floating globules near each table, glowing a soft gold. Digital interfaces are purposefully kept to a minimum. Everything else is shrouded in black or brown, like they are meeting in a cave burnished by amber.

Like they’re walking off any known map.

Even Connor keeps a hand on Emma’s shoulder as they enter, as if she could fade into the shadows at any moment. She lets him do it. Without his steady grip, she fears she’ll melt into a puddle of puke and sweat on the floor.

“I figured you would bring him,” Carisa says, all smiles, as they step behind a semi-sheer curtain into the private room. The waiter scuttles off, wordless.

“It is my current assignment to protect Ms. Ibori from threats,” Connor says. Too polite. Utterly pointed.

Emma’s blouse is sticking to all the wrong places and her old black slacks barely fit her anymore but here they are, delivered up on a silver platter. God. This is the stupidest idea she’d ever had in her life. So it goes.

Connor gestures for her to slip into the booth first, and she does so. He follows closely after, boxing her in from any outside threat. She fights the rising bile in her throat.

“No listening devices,” Connor announces, settling his arms on the table.

“No one listening in,” Carisa confirms.

“Just North, waiting out front,” Connor says.

Emma stares resolutely forward. “We’re here. Like you asked.” Her fingers wrap around the edge of the table so that her hands won’t shake. “So talk.”

Carisa watches her from down her nose, mouth twitching into a smirk. “The straight answer it is.” Her eyes are black. “I’m in a deal and I want out,” she says, voice low and even. The mettle of a business negotiator. “I’ll tell you what I know in exchange for immunity.”

Emma raises her eyebrow.

“You are already engaged in illegal activity,” Connor says, voice chillingly business-like. “Your demands are high.”

Carisa squints at him. “Am I?”

“Your implant,” he clarifies.

“What do you--”

“You scanned me,” Emma says, glaring as the memory flashes through her skin. Fire. Lightning. “Like an android. I _felt_ it.”

“You--”

But Carisa snaps her mouth shut, eyes glittering as the light globule floats closer a moment. Something dawns there in her gaze, something that makes the woman’s jaw loosen. Something that makes her lean forward ever so slightly, toward Emma. Daring. Desperation.

The moment ends as soon as it begins, and Carisa is again on the attack. “What do you know about your parents’ line of work?”

“They were scientist-engineer types,” Emma says, pressing her voice into flatness.

“A bioengineer and a brilliant computer engineer and neither of them held steady jobs. How do you figure?” She sips on her ice water.

“I don’t -- I dunno. I was a kid.”

“Never lived in one town for longer than two years, never bought any houses, never let themselves settle. Disco, Bentleyville, Glen Elder…all of them tiny towns, where no one would pay them mind if they didn’t make a fuss.”

Blood leaves her face, her mouth. All names of towns she had lived in, if only for a time. “Where did you--”

“And their deaths,” she continued, unbothered. “From a car crash...but do you really believe that? Have you ever?”

Connor leans in to the table, body taut as if ready to spring. “Get to the point.”

“How do you know all that?” Emma says.

“ _Because_ . You want to know the real story of Genesis Biotech? Your parents were a piece of it. You’re _looking_ at a piece of it.”

She feels Connor go entirely still next to her. Emma lays her fists on the table, white-knuckled.

“Immunity,” Carisa says, leaning back in her booth. “Or I say nothing else.”

“I require more proof than words,” Connor says. A hunter. Cold.

“Scan this, Detective. Your  _real_ scan.”

Carisa holds out her gloved hand. Then she peels off the glove, slowly, wincing. The light floats over and Emma bites back a gasp. Carisa’s hand is a bruised purple and red, bits of the skin seeming to stretch over unnaturally thick bones, veins discolored with black rot.

“A biohaptic interface that connects...straight to the brain,” Connor says, voice quieted in shock. “With likely connections to data streams. Did you do this?”

“Genesis did it,” Carisa says. “And I let them because I believed in it. It was only on the edge of legality then -- they’d always call it _pioneering the final wild west_. And we would have done anything for it. To be at the front of progress…” Something in her voice breaks. “Now it’s probably killing me. Because two bright stars decided we’d gone too far...”

Her face falls back into the shadow and Emma feels her heart seize in her chest. 

"No," Emma says, as if that can make it untrue. 

“It’s just my theory,” Carisa says. “But I’ve had a lot of time to think about who ruined my life.”

The moving...the constant moving, never _settling_...

“Why didn’t you come forward?” Connor says, voice tight. He’s close enough to Emma now that she can feel his leg against hers, foot tapping on the floor. “Multiple whistleblower laws would have protected you.”

“Ha,” she says, mirthless. “No. The shadow of the company is long. Even longer than I thought. And I wanted to _live_.”

Emma’s brain clicks into gear. Something that walked the line of illegal modification in the early 2020s blew past that line today, especially after the Android Act was passed. Because by then, enough horror stories had hit the news -- biohackers dying gruesome deaths, ending up in comas in hospitals, becoming the ashes of their own blazed trails. Who then could she go to, when the entirely too-complex mechanisms started breaking down, as all machines do? Especially if…

_No._

Her vision tunnels white. Her hands tighten until they shake.

“They killed my parents,” Emma chokes out. “ _How_?”

“Immunity,” Carisa repeats. “Give it to me.”

Emma looks to Connor in desperation. Her world spins out of control yet he is still as a glacier, stable as time. What she would give for that. He gives her a small nod, eyes crinkling in concern -- the only break to his official facade.

“I’ve sent the request to Speaker Markus. Now.” He leans forward, arms on the table. “Talk.”

Carisa smiles, as if seeing confirmation flash in her eyes. Maybe she does see it. Everything is on the table now, it seems. She reaches down to a bag beside her, which prompts Connor’s hand to hover near Emma’s wrist a moment. His LED spins yellow. His hand hesitates with tension, as if ready to pull her free from this place at the drop of a pen.

Perhaps he isn’t the calm glacier on the inside.

Carisa pulls a tablet from her bag, taps a few things on it and lays her swollen hand atop it. Something populates on the screen. A few moments pass before she slides it across the table.

“It will erase in one hour,” she says. Connor leans back, hands twitching as they fall back into his lap, eyes flicking between Carisa and the document. He nods again to Emma, allowing her a chance to read it.

Her eyes land first on Carisa’s New Jericho dossier, as if confirmation that everything happening to them is real. A small-time executive of a venture capital company focused on medical startups that has few employees, some boutique thing that likely disguises whatever it is Carisa actually does. _Rich people_. Her interest in New Jericho was listed as android-human medical tech advancements. Emma drags her finger across the page.

“Tell me about Genesis,” Connor says to Carisa, formal tone firmly in place.

“It was a company experimenting with biomechanics. Pre-androids. We wanted to improve humanity. I suppose some people preferred we be replaced.” Her voice was low with bitterness. “I was just a young medical researcher then. Your parents were much higher up than me...brighter than everyone else there. And they knew it.”

Fury and begrudging respect battle in her tone. Emma’s eyes dart back to the tablet.

Genesis Biotech. Founded all the way back in 2010, but it didn’t see much in the way of funding until closer to 2016. Main offices were just outside Detroit, right before its big boom. A couple satellite addresses. Never above 100 employees, for the most part. Emma tries to breathe through her nose to slow her heart rate. She turns the digital page after confirming Connor sees it, too.

“Why would the altered androids be tied back to Genesis?”

Project files. A lot of names that made no sense but certainly had a theme. Aselgeia. Cassia. Jubilee. Manna. She’d been in enough Vacation Bible Schools to recognize the biblical terms, though many of them were obscure as hell.

“I don’t know,” Carisa says, eyebrows knitting together. “Maybe he’s getting sloppy...maybe he wants you to find out...”

Connor leans forward slightly. “Who?”

Her eye twitches. “The more we talk aloud, the more we risk,” Carisa says, voice tightening. “He’s...he’s like a spider in the web.”

Other names listed that were separate for some reason...Lydia, Atarah, Immanuel, Gideon. She recognized a few more biblical references, sure.

[we c a n ‘t stay]

[you w o n ‘t leave me….]

Memories float to the surface like dead bodies, a flash of white in the dark.

Her vision tunnels. She flicks to the next page.

“Carisa.” Connor’s voice is hard as stone. “I can’t help you _unless_ you talk.”

Personnel files. She scans.

Shara Ibori. Ji-hun Moon.

She stops breathing.

“Abel Flynn.” Carisa’s mouth pinches. “He...we were business partners...of a sort. He’s young. Smart. But he’s...something’s not right with him.”

Connor tilts his head. “What does he want?”

She lets out a single, bitter laugh. “I wish I knew,” she says. “He reached out to me. Brilliant kid. Resume lists Stanford, blockchain confirmed it and everything. He seems like the real deal. And I thought it was because of my medtech expertise…” She snorts, but her eyes are wide. “It was because of Genesis. He did a background check and found it like you did, I’m guessing…”

“ _Seems_ like the real deal?” Connor presses. “What’s his tie to Genesis?”

“I have no idea. He kept talking about something called Project Nazirite, which he insisted I should have known about. I didn’t. I’m 90 percent sure it isn’t even real...but he somehow knew about my implants. He helped me relieve my pain...and suddenly I was working for _him_.” Carisa stares, eyes hard, and Emma suddenly feels vertigo, like they’d moved forward 100 feet in an instant. Carisa leans forward, right into the golden bloom of light.

Emma feels 10 years old again, bundled into the family van stuffed full of boxes of their life. Frustrated. Lost.

“Did you help him kidnap the androids?” Emma asks, voice shaking. “Did you?”

Carisa’s looks away with a sigh, like she’s in a dance she didn’t sign up for. “Why don’t you answer one of my questions?” she says, voice suddenly sparkling with curiosity. “I was hoping for a _conversation_ …”

“That’s not how this works,” Connor says, slowly moving his arm in front of Emma.

But Carisa presses. “Why did they have _you_? It doesn’t make any _sense_ with any of my theories...with their wild itinerant life...why bring you into it?”

Emma’s control shatters. Her fingers tighten around the tablet and it shakes in grip; she wonders, for a moment, if it will snap in half. But then Connor gently takes her hands in his, startling her with their warmth.

“Let go,” he whispers, soft, mouth close to her ear. Too many things flutter at once in her stomach.

“Who killed them?” Her voice can barely rise above a whisper.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. What did they _know_?” Carisa leans forward. “I'm nearly certain that's why he wants you--”

And that’s when the air shifts.

Connor’s LED spins and he suddenly sits up. His hands tighten around hers for a split second before he snakes an arm around her shoulder. Her heart flies to her mouth, pulse scattering.

“That can’t be possible,” Connor says out loud -- apparently on a phone call. “North?”

Carisa stares at them, wide-eyed. “What’s going on?”

Suddenly he’s pulling Emma’s whole body out of the booth, other hand on his gun. The tablet slips from her grasp at the force of his movement. “We have to go. Now.”

Not three moments later, two people, black-eyed, expressionless, enter the curtain. A waiter calls after them _Sir, ma’am, you can’t go in there!_

Androids. LEDs blaring red, flashing, an alarm.

_Her ears ring and the pain novas into a thousand pieces in her hand, on her wrist, on her temple. Nothing to do but run. Run, Emma. RUN!_

Her muscles lock up. Not again. Not _again_. Connor shoves her behind him, one arm back like a gate, pressing her backward until she is against a wall, the other aiming his gun. Her hands dig into his blazer, unnaturally smooth, as he pushes against her. But no matter how he tries, she can still see just over his shoulder, and that’s when the bottom falls out of everything she understands.

Raina.

One of the disappeared androids…

Her same brown ponytail, the same smooth olive skin, the same chocolate eyes, but all her cheer, all her bright smiles _drained_ from her. A blank slate. Unfeeling. Standing next to a man Emma didn’t recognize, whose soft handsomeness rang cold in his nothingness.

“Stop where you are, or I will be forced to shoot!” Connor commands. His voice reverberates through his back to her palms.

They don’t stop. They push forward, mindless.

“Raina!” Emma shrieks.

Emma thinks of the last time she ever saw Raina. _I think I’m beginning to understand,_ she said, like the sun was coming out.

Connor shoots twice.

“No!” Emma screeches.

Dark blue blood splatters the shadowy table, the globule of light, Connor’s hand. He does not wince. Blooms of darkness widen on the chests of the intruders. The light spins, sending splotchy shadows everywhere. Her ears ring.

Carisa stumbles out of her booth and Connor reaches an arm out to her to assist. But it’s too late.

Everything happens so _fast_.

“Get away!” Carisa shouts. “This is a _mistake_!”

The man stays down. Raina -- Raina’s ghost, Raina’s dead body -- keeps _moving_. Lurching forward like a zombie from a horror film, unnatural and blocky, eyes wide open, looking at nothing. The smell of ozone and burning mixes with the heady tang of thirium.

Electricity sparks in the hole in Raina’s chest as she -- _it_ \-- reaches Carisa before Connor can move. Her hand seizes Carisa’s.

Carisa yanks her hand back, but Raina’s fingers lock around her wrist. “Override--!”

Her words are suddenly choked by screams -- as if boiling alive.

Emma locks her arms around Connor’s middle, hands reaching up his chest. “Don’t touch her!” she shouts, remembering with shocking clarity her training on electricity safety, but her warning is drowned by the sizzled screeching of Carisa, by the commotion emerging outside the curtain, by her own heart beating senselessly in her chest, her ears, her throat. Carisa’s swollen hand goes to her eyeball as her screams turn into creaking shrieks, blood pouring from her nose, her hand turning black with burning…

A thick _thunk_. Something falls.

And then silence.

She feels Connor step back into her, both arms back as if to keep her there, face still outward, scanning for threats. She should let go, a part of her says, but she finds the thought impossible. She keeps her arms tight around his torso, hands clutching his chest, barely able to breathe, so _afraid_ he’ll go somewhere and she won’t be able to follow.

“Don’t look,” he says.

But it’s too late for that.

Carisa is dead.

* * *

The DPD feels like a place outside of time. The lights in the halls are low, casting all things in a shroud of night, but the light in the conference room pulses in the back of her eyes, even as she squeezes her eyes shut, pacing by the large, dark windows as Connor debriefs with Fowler, Hank, and the entirety of the New Jericho power quad. A TV airing KCN drones on in the background.

_Lydia, Atarah, Immanuel, Gideon…_

                 Screaming, screeching, skin bubbling from heat…

                          North, twitching on the pavement...

Squeezesqueezesqueeze don’t _fucking_ listen.

“She had access to too much.” North, exhausted, voice edging with metal, repeating herself. “We’re _compromised_.”

“We can’t decide anything right now.” Markus, pushing back, soft. “You need to rest.”

“I told you I’m fine--”

Charred flesh, melted plastic...

“We can’t just do nothing.” Connor. Intent as a bell. “We need to move on this information now.”

“ _Right_ now?” Hank, all gravel. “You gonna go gallivanting off in the night?”

_We have an incoming news brief from Detroit._

She opens her eyes to the blinding yellow of a KCN newscast.

“Goddamnit.” Fowler, growling.

_The chief executive of Blue Sky Ventures, one of the originals of New Jericho’s first round of investment partners, has died in an incident involving 3 androids, exclusive sources have told KCN._

Markus brings his hand to his mouth. North, Simon and Josh close in ranks around him. Hank looks to the ceiling, sighing, one hand on Connor’s shoulder. Emma stands behind them, watching.

_The Detroit Police Department refused to comment, citing ongoing investigations, but confirmed the death. Blue Sky Ventures has released a statement, pinning the death on New Jericho leadership._

A man appears on the screen, and the first thing that strikes her is his youth. He can’t be much older than her. His dark hair curls haphazardly onto his forehead. Everything about his pale face seems too large -- his nose, his lips, his brow. The inklings of a beard shadow his jaw. But something about his gaze, stormy and grey, pierces Emma through her heart.

Abel.

She is as sure of it as she is of her own name.

_"Carisa Cho was well-beloved -- a brilliant businesswoman with a mind for science who truly believed in the cause of New Jericho. That she was taken from us by an attack from the androids at the very city she sought to uplift is just continued proof that humans and androids cannot co-exist in peace without serious risk. We will be pulling out of our agreement with New Jericho, and encourage others to reconsider their positions, as well."_

The final columns holding her up finally give way.

They fell into a trap.

In a flashing instant, blurry with dread, Emma closes the distance between herself and Connor. His fists ball tightly at his sides, one still stained with fading blue blood.

Through her spinning thoughts, she reaches out to grab his hand.

Their eyes meet. His chin wavers.

His fist relaxes. But then he turns it on her -- he slips from her grasp and captures her hand instead, squeezing her fingers tightly to his unblemished palm, eyes scanning her face, point by point.

She looks away, but squeezes back, thumb against the back of his hand.

He does not let go until Markus gestures him elsewhere, some thirty minutes later. His arm stretches out as he leaves. Her fingers slip away one by one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so we dive FULL-THROATED BACK INTO THE PLOT. eek. the balance should be a tad better next chapter, aha.
> 
> big shout out to my husband for talking me through thinking WAY too hard about some of the shit in this chapter even though he has played barely a third of the game lmao
> 
> Thanks as always for taking the time to read, kudos and comment! It quite literally gives me the will to press on when this shit gets weird lol.


	8. what hides in ephemera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He looks at her and he understands, all at once, why Markus paints.

Emma is bundled in a black car with two UN officers and Simon. Connor watches as they drive away down the idyllic cobblestone driveway in the back of the house, hand up in farewell, mouth pressed into a line. He swears he can see Emma watching him through the back window, her brown eyes like two points of warmth, until the car is far down the road. But perhaps it is wishful thinking. A useless process. A dangerous one.

[MISSION FAILURE] [MISSION FAILURE] [MISSION FAILURE]

_Markus…_

_She’s under our protection now. We don’t have a choice._

_Don’t make me leave her alone._

_She won’t be alone. But we’re going to need you. And you can’t put that on her._

[MISSION ACCEPTED: REDIRECT EFFORTS TOWARD INVESTIGATION]

[MISSION ACC*&$&^^????/////]

[INTERFERENCE DETECTED.]

                         Emma is not an _interference._

Your people are depending on you.

_Don’t you remember? The nothing you feared...once so long ago on a winter’s night...it was there. It was in that android’s eyes._

[MOVE.]

He remembers beginning to walk. He does not recall the journey. He is suddenly at the conference table in House Manfred mid-conversation, Markus standing before the group, talking of press statements and political strategy, silhouetted by the rising sun.

_Abel is close to getting what he wants and all you can do is_ **watch her leave**.

“We arrange an op,” North says, as if that settles everything.

“We’re under _extreme_ scrutiny right now,” Josh counters. “We can’t afford to do anything under the table.”

Connor can’t stop parts of his body from moving. His leg bounces in his chair. His fingers twist and twist and twist together...

“What are we supposed to do?” North’s voice, pitching higher. “We can’t wait. He’s already made his first move. He’ll just keep making everything _worse_!”

Markus raises his hands in conciliation. Connor nearly jolts out of his chair when he realizes Markus has been watching him this whole time.

“What does he want?” he asks Connor. “Does he just hate us? I mean, what’s the apparent leverage here?”

“Ms. Cho believed it may have had something to do with Emma’s parents and their knowledge of Genesis Biotech,” he says as if by rote. “A Project Nazirite that may or may not exist.”

Something triggers his lie detector -- it’s the closest process that makes any sense. Hank would perhaps call it a hunch. Because Emma’s made it clear that she knows next to nothing about what her parents would have done, and nothing about her life screams “hoarding secrets” other than the itinerant life she inherited. Can Abel truly afford to risk everything for a daughter that may know nothing at all?

That can’t be _it_ , can it?

That can’t be the only reason he’d inflict this horrorshow on everyone?

“Well, that doesn’t...help us,” Markus admits. “We need more information before we act. Josh, what’s the schedule?”

Josh lists appearances on television networks, interviews with approved press outlets and the potential delaying of the Remembrance Ceremony. The to-do list is long. The day has barely begun -- or perhaps it’s never ended, still tripping over yesterday’s track, skipping like one of Hank’s old tape decks, over and over and over.

Carisa’s autopsy. Examining their cyber defenses. Triple vetting Emma’s new UN guards. Calling Kamski about the androids…

He thinks of the darkness in their gazes, the nothingness, the _disappearance_ of who they might have been, and fear rips his processors apart.

It sounds like Carisa’s dying shrieks. It sounds like Emma, screaming _no_.

* * *

The guards, somewhat obvious in white and dark blue, hover just outside Valerie’s office at the old Detroit municipal center, small but white-bright and warm, lined with thin windows -- a hold over from an older era. Colorful cross stitch patterns peek over the shelves behind the desk, spouting various ironic phrases, including one framed with tulips that said “When life shuts a door, open it again, that’s how doors work.”

Valerie watches, a perfectly manicured hand tapping her dark-tawny cheek, as anger simmers around Emma like exhaust fumes.

Everything is all wrong, now, but no one expects her to do anything except...wait. Answers feel just out of her reach. Her group, her _Corps_ , is completely thrown under the bus by some freak, likely the same freak who stole Raina’s life away and prompted Carisa’s brain to melt out of her skull, and she’s left to muddle through it, wordless and tired, without Connor.

And now...

“So all that work I did was for nothing, after all,” Emma mutters. Her frustration strains the edge of her voice.

“I said the ceremony is _delayed_ , not cancelled.” Valerie’s thin gold bracelets chime as she gestures to a chair in front of her desk for the third time. Emma shakes her head. Valerie casts an unreadable look to Simon, who hangs by the window.

“It’s on the same day as Veteran’s Day, anyway, so we’d been talking of choosing a different date to prevent...battle with other emotional displays of patriotism,” Simon says, voice dry.

“That’s not why,” Emma says flatly, unable to look at either of them. “You’re letting him win.”

Valerie narrows her eyes. “Sweetheart, sit down before I write you up.”

Emma glares at the floor but she complies, flopping into the plush magenta chair before Valerie’s desk. She has at least enough sense not to put her job in jeopardy because she was feeling flighty. But only just enough. “We can’t just do nothing.”

“We’re not doing _nothing,_ ” Valerie says. Her tone is pointed, even for her city-born sharpness. “But we can’t do something half-baked. Don’t be stupid with me, honey.”

Emma crosses her arms to hold it all in, thinking of the chaos. And though she feels the same pressing desperation filling her lungs that she’s felt for weeks on weeks on weeks, the same strange desolation from being shunted off for her own supposed safety, she pushes her tongue to the top of her mouth and says nothing at all. She can’t stop hearing Carisa screaming in her head.

“What we need is a more immediate and individual way to signal our unity,” Simon says, as ever seeking the common ground. “And that may mean we just keep working hard. Setting up a good foundation.”

“That won’t keep the kids’ morale up,” Valerie admits, pulling a tablet to her desktop. “We gotta spin it better than that. And that still leaves Emma with nothing to do.”

“What about the HAIT?” Emma says. Her unlicensed dalliances with the HAIT are fodder for jokes amongst the Corps, but Valerie doesn’t even crack a smile and Emma doesn’t feel much like joking, anyway.

“What about it?” Valerie asks, eyes still on her tablet.

Emma taps the arm of the chair. “We’ve not really done as much as we could with it.”

“We haven’t had much time to experiment with it,” Simon says, tone neutral.

Humans and androids. What do they offer each other?

What does she do for Connor?

“And the name...I mean, it’s all there. Human-Android interfacing,” she says into the quiet. “I could help with that. I’m already approved--”

Valerie sets the tablet down suddenly and turns her gaze, dark as mahogany, on Emma. “Do you really think you are in a state to use the damn HAIT, Emma?”

Emma leans back in her chair. “What? Yeah--”

“You’ve barely been sleeping, I can see it in your face.” Valerie’s expression is hard as tiger’s eye. “You really wanna take on everyone else’s problems on top of that?”

Something inside her starts shivering. “It’s easier when it’s not me,” she says, shocked into truth by Valerie’s blunt nature. “And you know I understand it. I’m not a counselor but--”

“Exactly, and that’s reason enough I should say no,” Valerie snaps. She sighs, perhaps noticing the crack that forms in Emma’s facade. “... _you_ haven’t had a thorough psych check by one of our own, for starters...”

“We have a number of androids who specialized in psychological evaluation looking for work,” Simon volunteers. “It may be good for you to speak with one, anyway, Emma.”

Emma sinks further into her chair when he says her name, finding it impossible to look into those giant icy eyes. They see everything. “If I do this,” Emma says, hardly able to believe her own words as they come out of her mouth, “and I go to a counselor, can I at least help  _test_ the HAIT?”

Valerie looks at her over tortoiseshell glasses. She’s silent for so long that Emma is sure she is about to point toward her office door. But then she relents.

“Something’s eatin’ you, honey,” she says, voice dangerously kind. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But,” she says, lifting a hand to stop Emma, mouth open in protest, “I’ll keep it on the docket. For now.  _If_ you see someone.”

* * *

True to his word, Simon arranges Emma a meeting with a counselor. Same day.

She tries to drown her fear with determination. If she has to be treated like a bomb waiting to trigger, maybe, finally, she can do something useful while time ticks down.

The counselor is a lovely android woman named Natalie, with warm hazel eyes and blonde hair set in a soft wave. Her smile is perfectly charming and her voice utterly disarming. Her LED spins yellow a moment as she overlooks Emma’s Corps profile.

Emma presses her body firmly into the burgundy, itchy sofa, looking intently at the scraggly carpet of the back office of a Corps-established medical center. She plants her feet on the floor and thinks, pointedly, of her toes.

“I’m glad to see you, Emma,” Natalie says, with a tone of warm sincerity Emma can’t help but take seriously in turn. “Everything you say will be confidential. I’ll simply provide an answer to Corps regarding whether or not you are capable of using the HAIT devices.”

The questions start, and she’s struck by their familiarity.  _Where were you born?_ Somewhere not far from Detroit, actually. _Where did you live?_ All over the map. _How would you describe yourself?_ Hard-working, reliable, busy as fuck, honestly a little over this not-being-able-to-help situation, kind of helpless right now, generally, if we’re being real. Which I guess we are. _Do you have any siblings?_ Not that I know of.

_What was your relationship with your parents like?_ They were...my rock. Yes, they’re dead now. I was 18 when it happened. Yes, I still think about it… _Do you have any living family?_ My aunt and uncle, but I’m not allowed to talk to them just yet. You know about all that, right? My whole...situation?

Natalie just nodded sweetly at that.

_Tell me about your past experience with psychotherapy._ Well...I had a grief counselor for a while after my parents died. And...when I was really young I had a therapist after I was adopted. I don’t remember a lot from it, though.

Suddenly, the questions stop. Natalie looks down at her tablet for a long moment. Emma clutches her knees at this unusual pause. It stretches, on and on.

“Emma, can you tell me your very first memory?”

Emma blinks, face burning, but she clears her throat and dives in: She’s six years old, “helping” bring groceries inside, when she drops the single thing she is carrying -- a goldenrod gallon of milk -- on the floor. It breaks instantly, splattering all over the linoleum in the kitchen. The bright trill of anxiety still rings as clear today as it did then: her abject fear that mom and dad would send her away forever for a simple mistake, like she had to prove her worth. She remembers her dad’s startled laugh at the sight, in fact.  _Little bug, it’s okay. Why are you crying over spilled milk?_

Natalie nods down at her tablet a moment. “You know what is very interesting, Emma, is that that’s the same memory you told your counselors when you were seven years old.”

Emma’s blood turns to ice, even if the importance of that doesn’t slot in properly. “What’s interesting about that? How do you know that?”

“I found your old files from your last counselor. It took me a little searching.” Natalie leans back, face betraying no emotion, even as Emma feels the world stutter to a stop. “Memory loss from time is natural. It’s how human brains sort through information. So it would make sense that, at 26, that would be your clearest original memory. But at 7...one would expect you’d remember something from your time as a three-year-old, perhaps. But you never have.”

Her foot begins to tap against the floor. “Well, I was adopted. Mom and dad always said it was probably because of...foster care experiences or whatever. I was in therapy pretty much from when I can remember until about nine years old…”

Natalie nods, confirming this on her tablet. Her brow crinkles, the only emotional tell on her face. “Tell me about your experience with that.”

A memory comes shaking out of the dirt. “I, uh, used to have night terrors as a kid. And...a lot of phobias.” _Lightning, crashing, screaming into a pillow, everything hurts._ “And then I didn’t. I honestly...” She thinks back, as far as she can go, but it’s like trying to wipe tar off a window. “I don’t remember much of it. Just that it was.”

Natalie’s hazel eyes rest on Emma in a way that makes her lean into her chair, like she could see far back into her head -- all the way back, as far as the film will go. “There are notes in your record that point to hypnotherapy. Did you know about that?”

Emma gulps down the stilted air of the room and for a long moment, finds herself unable to speak.

“No. What’s it for?”

“It’s...controversial, but it has been historically used to help patients with various anxiety disorders walk through traumas that may underpin some of their worst anxious impulses. Some scholars in the field...though there are few...believe it could also be used to change your perception of an impulse, such as pain. But keep in mind that not all scholars agree that it does what it says it does.”

Emma settles back in her chair as the weight of this hits her. “Are you...sure?”

“Unless your record through the blockchain is lying, I am sure, yes. And if it  _is_ a lie, it’s a strange one.”

“But I don’t remember it.”

Natalie adjusts her legs, pinned together in a pencil skirt. “I know,” she says softly. “And that’s the part that confuses me the most. You’re supposed to be taught tools in hypnotherapy you can apply in your daily life. You’re _supposed_ to remember it.”

“Maybe it’s just...one of those kid things,” Emma says, half-hearted, and her face falls when she sees Natalie’s pained, subtle frown.

“Maybe,” Natalie says.

The events of the past few days click by in her head. Electricity. Fire. _The shadow of the company is long. They didn’t have friends. Two bright stars._

How much would remain outside her reach forever? What didn’t her parents want her to _know_?

“Can I get those memories back?”

Natalie’s LED spins a bright, solid yellow for a good 10 seconds. “I am trained in hypnotherapy, but there would be no guarantees whatsoever.”

“Let’s do it,” Emma says, not giving herself time to think.

“Hold on. It’s very important to consider, Emma…” Natalie extends a conciliatory hand outward. “There might be nothing there. Or maybe you forgot for a reason. Sometimes the brain does this to protect you, and there’s nothing to be gained from opening old wounds. You might just find pain.”

Emma shrugs. She’d been toeing the deep end of the pool of things she didn’t like ever since she got shot. “It’s better than the nothing I have.”

Natalie smiles so sadly that it sends chills through her spine. “It might not be.”

* * *

The cold settles on Connor’s sensors, just _like before_ , snow sharpening the silhouette of the house _like before_. There is a human saying about this feeling, this unease settling in the pit of his abdomen, on the back of his neck -- it all makes one hairs stand on end.

Elijah Kamski’s smirk (holding out a gun like so, _the Kamski test_ , he says, like it means something to Connor) is an etching out of ash -- the dark remains of a flashbomb on his memory cores that comes from a center point: this geometric block of obsidian etched into the lakeside landscape that Kamski calls a home.

[&^&^*INSTABILITY]

An important distinction separates this visit from the last: Elijah called them to him.

_No offense, Connor, but do you think DPD’s Cybercrime Division has the_ best _encryption protection money can buy? On the city’s dime? Doubtful._

“Our maker lives here, huh,” Josh says. He holds his limbs close to his body despite not feeling the cold. “It looks like a bunker for the end of the world.”

But Kamski’s facilities for technological study, tucked into an underground laboratory lit by diffused blue light, are indeed top of the line. Kamski gestures toward the set up, allowing Josh access to the various haptic panels connected to a clear tube. Empty glass tubes of various sizes, all the way to something that could fit something the size of an android, line the wall.

Josh shuts up. Connor’s doubts intensify.

Carisa’s brain implant sits in the attached tube -- clear of blood and brain matter, but still caked with a strange kind of rust. Charring? A vague resistance repulses his programming from scanning it directly.

Twilight had barely set in and somehow Kamski had pulled enough strings to prompt an expedited autopsy and forward that evidence directly to his home -- with Connor’s express approval, of course, but…

It all sits wrong, like puzzle pieces jumbling in a plastic bag.

Kamski’s interest could be explicitly business. The situation with the blue blood patent would be aggravating for any sharp-eyed inventor. But Kamski, who is usually never without his advantage, takes a strange tack these days. Showing up in public. Taking at least a feigned interest in android welfare. This…

“What do you get out of this?” Connor asks the man. Kamski, understated in a maroon v-neck and dark jeans, stands to the side, arms crossed in front of his chest. He looks askance to Connor. Something deeply dark flickers there.

“Well, _Detective,_ ” he says, spitting out Connor’s role, pushing him back with formality, “I’ve been doing some searching of my own. Some remembering.”

Connor raises an eyebrow. “Explain.”

Kamski looks away, far off into elsewhere. “In 2022, we were looking to expand...and one company in dire straits came to me. I was 20 years old and thought I knew everything. Even more than I do now.” A snort. “We took them all in. Hired them for their biotech expertise, took their warehouse and started developing androids for mass production right here in Detroit…”

[CONSTRUCTING...]

[PROFILE COMPLETE.]

Connor takes a step toward Kamski. “Genesis Biotech.”

“They were calling themselves something else, then,” Kamski says. “Jubilee Technologies, I think. But I asked Josh to look into it for me and my suspicion was right. They shared many of the same executives, one of which is still on the Cyberlife board, today. Even with the state it’s in.”

Josh continues to work on the computer interface.

“Either someone turned on me and pulled one of the longest cons of recent memory to create a poor reconstruction of my thirium recipe,” Kamski continues. “Or I sheltered something _else_.” A pointed look at the implant, stained with human effluence.

Connor struggles to reconcile this man with the one who was willing to risk Chloe’s death -- the same Chloe he kindly asked to remain upstairs. “What if it has nothing to do with you?” Connor asks, sharper than he expects. “You left Cyberlife.”

Another snort from Kamski. But then he frowns, like he’s watching a memory tinged with blue -- like a ghost is waiting when he shuts his eyes. “Everything with androids has _something_ to do with me.” His frown turns into a dark smirk, and that flash of melancholy is gone.

“Holy shit,” Josh says -- the first exclamation from him since he began his work. “I’m finally in.”

Connor and Kamski both gather around his navy dark interface as white code begins to cross the screen. “Holy shit…” Josh says again, but his tone shifts downward -- from excited curiosity to horror in an instant.

Kamski blinks a few times, brows furrowing in annoyance. “I’m not sure what you’re seeing here.”

“Are those old firewall scripts?” Connor asks.

“Yes...okay. You might want to be sitting down for this one, Connor,” Josh says, but Connor finds this notion ridiculous and does not move. Luckily, it appears to be only an expression. “She had access to all of our data at some point...I’m trying to work backward on access logs.”

_All of our data?_

“Including everything on Emma’s case? On all the disappearances?” Connor presses. All of their careful investigations into the fake companies, all of their studies on the taken androids, all of their notes on Emma’s status and _where she is living._..

“Yes. I...oh god.” Josh steps back from the computer a moment, and Connor feels a deep, instantaneous thrum of red-hot energy sweep his systems. What? _What?_ Kamski, too, leans inward, looking like an iceberg 2.3 seconds away from angrily snapping apart.

“From what I can tell,” Josh continues, “Carisa had figured out we were doing some intel on her through some base trolling of our datastreams, so she dug deeper. That’s why I was seeing more data sweeps. That’s why she approached Emma. I think she knew we were onto her, and she knew her...business partner wanted Emma for some reason, so she decided to act on her own accord. To find a better deal.”

“A solid analysis.” Connor does his best to keep his impatience out of his tone.

Josh points to his lines of code. “So at some point she goes back and does some reconnaissance of her own on Genesis Biotech, pulling up all sorts of old files. Old addresses, personnel…”

“That must have been when she summoned the information on the tablet,” Connor says, unsure where he’s going with this.

“But when she did that--” Josh points to a particularly angry line of code that makes both Connor and Kamski recoil slightly. Clear signs of firewall breakage. “Someone got the message and started hacking back, using that connection she’d formed with the data streams to take info from her, instead. All of what Carisa saw on our stuff.” Josh puts a hand up. “I cannot say enough how impressive this hacking is. It’s insanely good. Nigh impossible access to wetware and almost at an instant. Someone that knew about her _and_ likely had warning triggers on that information. Even top of the line hackers couldn’t get this far without that insight.”

The reconstruction sequence begins in his head. Blocks form, fast-forwarding through time, space, backward, forward...

“Abel,” Connor breathes.

“But why didn’t he just do that before?” Kamski presses, cool and logical. “Why wait, in that case? He clearly had the androids trailing her.”

“The announcement,” Connor says. “He saw an opportunity to sow resentment. But why wait until the moment of truth?”

“Wetware interfaces are banned for a reason,” Kamski explains. “They’re hard to hack because bizarre organic connections start forming that literally no one can explain or predict properly. But any hacking that _does_ break through can threaten the entire organic function.”

Josh points to where the coding abruptly ends. “A dump began here, like a hard reset, but it didn't complete. That action _plus_ the android electrocuting her must have literally overloaded her system.” A horrified pause. “Melted her brain.”

“That’s what the autopsy confirms,” Kamski mutters.

“He literally threw her away!” Josh says, aghast. “Just to make a point?”

Kamksi shrugs, a put-upon act of nonchalance that his widened eyes betrays. “That's business for you.”

But Connor can say nothing else. He feels a realization wrapping tightly around his throat.

Abel knows.

He doesn’t just know Carisa betrayed him. He knows they’re on his trail. He knows everything they know about the investigation. He knows where Emma is being kept.

He knows _everything_.

* * *

_I don't want to leave my friend, momma._

_I know, baby, I know. But you want to go on an adventure, right? We’re going to see the whole world._

_Her mother's hands are soft and warm against her cheeks, thumbs rubbing her cheekbones. Sterile white light shines just beyond her mother's round face, her big brown eyes, her smile that makes Emma’s whole heart yearn for the sun. For a hug. She reaches her small arms outward._

_Only if Momma and Dadda are there._

_Momma picks her up off the ground and squeezes her so tightly she forgets to breathe. Forgets the fear squeezing all of her insides. Forgets everything that's ever hurt her, if only for a moment._

_I love you so much, baby girl._

_Love you more, Emma says, certain._

_Momma pokes Emma’s nose. Let's go find Dadda. Remember our secret?_

_Emma._

_Emma!_

**_Emma!_ **

She gasps into consciousness, head lulling on cold tile. Someone's hands are tight around her upper arms. She blinks hard, twice, to clear the fuzz in her vision before she realizes who is leaning over her.

Connor, back-lit by Hank’s yellow kitchen lighting, looks down upon her like she’s fallen down from somewhere.

Her body floods with such intense warmth that she smiles against her will. Relief.

He's finally here…the mold of some angel, sculpted from the sky…

“Why are you on the floor?” he asks, shaken. Her smile falters.

She leans up on her elbows, and for a moment their faces are close enough that their noses nearly touch. The world still spins with the thickness of sleep. The relief coursing through her system pulses to the rhythm of one of Hank's old jazz songs playing from the living room. But why does he look so afraid?

“Hank said you'd probably come here first...but he went to bed...”

_And I had to see you after the day I had._

She swallows those words back, swallows down the slow heat building everywhere in her body, the old fears, the new ones.

He finally leans away far enough that she can sit upright.

“You were thrashing,” he says, voice flat. “I thought something happened…”

“I was just asleep,” she says. Her eyes finally fall on the cardboard box of items next to her, labeled FRAGILE. The real world outside this moment of time, this moment alone in the kitchen with the person she'd been waiting for, comes rushing back. A pause. “You really think someone somehow snuck in past both the UN guards _and_ Sumo?”

He doesn't smile at all, and neither does she. His hands are still around her arms. Something amorphous and shadowy chases the light in the back of his eyes.

He finally breaks away and looks into the box. His mouth twitches downward, but his voice is soft. “What are all these?”

She'd cajoled Hank into taking her to her apartment through a mix of tears and frustration so she could find it. Photographs, old art projects, dumb tchotchkes her dad would buy for them both in every airport he visited…

“I went to a counselor,” Emma says.

Connor falls back into an actual sitting position, expression unreadable. He watches her carefully.

“It’s so I can use the HAIT,” she says, a little faster than she intends, emotion suddenly rising up like water reaching a boil. He tilts his head, eyes squinting, and she keeps talking before he can interrupt. “Someone did hypnotherapy on me once upon a time and I don't remember any of it, like I'm in some _fucking_ movie. And she tried to put me under and I…”

_Facing a field of soybeans, swinging on a swing on a rickety old playground. Swinging and swinging and swinging…_

_Just stay here, little bug. Her dad's voice. Isn't it nice here?_

“...there was nothing.”

_I can't do this therapy with you, Emma. I've never seen someone twitch so much during a trance. Like you were in pain._

_I wasn't. I didn't feel anything._

_I'm sorry, Emma. But no._

“There was nothing,” she says, “and maybe there will always be nothing.”

He watches her. Maybe he doesn't understand. Maybe he could never understand what it was like, to be a person built on a foundation smothered in shadow.

He lays his hand next to hers. “What did you want to find?”

That question shakes her. Proof? Something that signaled her parents weren’t the kind of people that would get involved in something like all this?

“Anything, I guess,” she says. “A sign that I didn’t remember a lie.”

He taps the top of her hand, pausing a moment in thought. The contact is so small, but a thrum of blue energy sweeps her whole body anyway -- a keen reminder of all the things she doesn’t have.

“It’s just one android’s opinion,” he says, “but I don’t think anyone can take their love from you.”

Maybe.

She looks away.

“You should go back to the Speaker's house,” he says quietly. “I'd feel better if you slept there.”

“Will you be coming with?”

He doesn't answer right away. Another moment passes and he doesn't answer at all. Panic builds in her chest. Panic and a kind of pain, like her heart _tearing_. Disappointment, heavy as rain, presses out all logical sense, pressing and pressing and pressing until she can feel tears hiding behind her eyes.

“Okay, well,” she says, voice barely bridging the gap forming in her throat, “consider. Maybe I don’t want to do that.”

She grabs the box and stands up fast enough that she's lightheaded for a second. She sets the box on the table and leans against it, letting the world spin. He lingers close by as if ready to catch her, which makes the tsunami build and build.

“Maybe I don’t want to be followed around by two people I don’t know.”

“Emma…”

“Don’t _Emma_ me. Just stop it.” Her fingers wrap around the edges of the cardboard, softened with time and abuse. “I _missed_ you.” She tries to sound annoyed but her voice breaks. She can’t look at him. “It was just one stupid day. But I...”

_I felt so alone._

A new song comes on over the sound system, one of her favorites on this disc, and she starts moving her shoulders to it, slowly, like she's working out some kinks in her body. She closes her eyes a moment.

“...Emma?”

Heat blooms on her cheeks. She turns around, slowly, afraid to see what he's asking after -- and he’s moving his shoulders, too, copying her.

_Oh no._

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“What are _you_ doing?”

He continues his jerky movements and doesn’t answer, watching her ever so carefully.

“...are you trying to dance?”

“I am just following your lead,” he says.

A chalky laugh bubbles just under her heart, despite everything. “Really?”

Something in his expression softens as he looks down upon her, leaning down just slightly. “I know you like this song,” he says. “It feels...boppy, as you said.”

A sound like a water droplet plinking into a sink. A realization. A funny one. “You don’t know how to dance.”

“It is not among my social protocol programs.”

“ _No_. You don’t say.”

“I have looked a few things up.”

She smiles, despite herself.

And then, as if she'd just given him permission, his movements get worse. Wider and wider, more expressionist, face still even as his arms swing wide. He looks like he’s competing for the World’s Best Shuffler award. It’s awful. It’s perfect.

“Stop it! You're embarrassing me,” she says, laugh finally bursting free. “Watch this.”

She closes her eyes a moment, moving to the music, following its mismatched beats, the jumble of random shit that works in spite of music’s laws. Her legs jam, her hips shake with a flow that an android can’t replicate.

Connor then does an approximation of what can only be the ancient and persisting Robot, looking dumb as hell and beautiful as the dawn. She laughs again.

“Please don’t stop,” he says, soft enough she nearly misses it. “I’ve missed your laugh.”

So she laughs more and more, and they dance like fools for a while.

And then, after too little time has passed, the song changes. It’s slow and silky and winding. Her heart skips a beat.

Her body betrays her (just as the music does, just as the universe seems willing to do) and she reaches out, hands on his shoulders. “That doesn’t fit this song anymore,” she says of his robot dance, her jamming. “We have to do something else.”

So she pulls him into a sway, slow and circular. They’re spinning in a choppy circle for a few moments, her palms on his shoulders, his legs locking in confusion.

“Work with me,” she whispers.

He looks down upon her, mystified, as she pulls one of his hands to her waist, where it is supposed to go. His legs finally loosen as he seems to understand, his LED settling between yellow and blue. They spin and he pulls her ever so slightly closer -- but not close enough that, from an outsider’s perspective, they couldn’t be spotted at a high school dance. The thought makes her smile again.

“This is called slow dancing,” she says, letting her gaze linger on his lapel. He was busy today. No sweaters when detective work calls.

“I remember,” he says softly. “From movies.”

Her face burns but God does it feel _right_. They spin on in relative silence, the music softly sweeping the room. She tries to absorb the entirety of him through her fingertips -- his shocking warmth, the careful ways he holds himself, whatever pushes him on through the day so that she can try to remember it for tomorrow. She spreads her fingers across his chest and allows herself this moment of weakness.

"I have to tell you something," he says.

Her heart rises in her throat. All of a sudden the music stops. He stops. Their toes nearly touch. His hands rest on her waist. His LED spins yellow and red, too close for her not to watch it, and her ears go fuzzy…

It feels something like hope.

“Did you just wifi my music--”

“I'm going to be going on a mission tonight,” he says softly.

Her chest hollows out in an instant. Hope sputters and dies.

“I don't want you to worry. But that's why I want you to stay at the Speaker's house.”

“The op?” Her voice feels tinny, far away. “I thought Markus didn't want any sudden moves.”

He blinks a few times. Something is off in how long it takes for him to answer, like he's pressing through a block in his programming. “New variables have moved the timetable up. It's all right,” he adds, moving a hand to her shoulder, as if anticipating the bile churning in her gut.

“I don’t like this,” she says. “I don't like this sneaking off into the night bullshit.” _I don't like you being gone. I don't like this new arrangement at all. I don't like my new guards. They don't even talk to me. I want the old arrangement back. I liked my old one. I loved the old one, despite everything it represented, I loved…_

_I love…_

“This is my job,” he says, so soft and so sad. She's going dizzy. _No. No._ She can't be thinking about this right now. This timing is terrible. This is out of the _wrong_ movie. This isn't right.

“Yeah,” she says, “I get that. But are you sure about this?”

His jaw twitches and he leans forward, just a touch. “Very.”

She takes in a sharp breath. “But what if…”

What if it all goes wrong? What if the universe strikes, like it always does, eventually?

What if every limitation between human-android interfacing becomes extraordinarily, undoubtedly clear in a flash of a single instant, a single sentence that breaks everything they've built?

What if she's in love with him and she wants him to _stay?_

What if he couldn't understand?

“Nothing will happen,” he says.

His hand brushes her hair out of her face a moment. Her whole body, alight with new understanding, nearly vibrates as his fingers reach her bare skin.

“I don't fail,” he says. “It’s not in my programming.”

* * *

She doesn't argue when he insists she take a sleeping pill.

She needed the sleep. And Connor…

[MISSION FAILED MISSION FAILED MISSION FAILED]

He needed her to sleep because he couldn't watch the wavering light in her eyes as he decided, then and there, to take matters into his own hands. He couldn't stand her asking after _him_ , couldn't stand the fact that he is the one who will make her cry again after these awful days, couldn't stand any more deception in his life or hers even as he perpetrates it.

And a small part, a part of his programming that he's ashamed of, a part that he wants to press away away away because of how _selfish_ it is, wanted to see her like this once more before he dove into the dark.

He never should have gone to Hank’s, like it was a normal day. He should have just gone. Because now...

Her mouth is partly open in deep sleep, chest rising slowly. Her hair is a halo, spread across the silky pillow Markus found in a linen closet. Her face is struck through with a beam of moonlight, casting her freckles in a shimmering glow akin to the stars he imagines them to be.

He looks at her and he understands, all at once, why Markus paints.  

Why artists try to capture beauty in a moment. Why it matters at all, to try and save the ephemera, the passing, the few. Why Emma’s memory bothers her so much. Why slow dancing exists.

Something itches in the back of his mind, processes of an unknowable sort lurching to life in the ruins of that old red wall, and he reaches out a careful hand.

He lays the backs of his fingers against her cheek, where the moonlight touches. He runs his fingers across the light, across her skin, soft as bedsheets.

Her warmth sends hot electricity up his arm, through his core and into his head. Thoughts scatter and then solidify in an instant. She's so breakable. Everything about her fragile, like the word on the box -- dirty and ephemeral and painfully organic -- even as she proves him wrong, even as she pushes through the day to day with a strength that he can’t fathom. She dances to music and laughs at his jokes and glares at her guards and flips everyone off.

He wants so badly to see that every day.

He wants this, a painting in motion.

He _wants_.

So he has calculated the odds.

In every calculation, they are against him; there is only a 43% chance of success for his current plan. If he does nothing at all, Emma’s chance of death or total disappearance hovers near 30% -- an unacceptable range, as is anything above near-0. He cannot be the one who makes her laugh to keep her safe this time, and the thought whirs like a drill to his right eye.

[*&^%PAIN]

Even so. His processors cycle with cold certainty.

If he doesn't move -- if he doesn't become the hunter, the _weapon_ \-- all of this will shatter. He’ll never get to explore why he likes to rest his hands on her waist, never get to sway in time to a rhythm, never hear her voice again.

She will be taken. _From_ him.

He hopes she will be able to forgive him for the lies. This one and all the rest, all his attempts to become someone who isn’t this version of himself. He knows who he has to be. Doesn't that matter more than who he _could_ be?

[MISSION: FIND ABEL]

[CONFLICTING PRIORITY. SPEAKER MARKUS DID NOT GIVE THIS ORDER.]

[PRIORITY SELECTED.]

[FIND ABEL NOW.]

He leaves in the night, guns holstered under his shoulder. He tells no one, not even North. The odds she will turn him in to Markus are too high.

His eyes burn from tears unshed.

He wishes he was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as always to everyone who is with me on this journey. your words and kudos mean the world to me!  
> maybe one day I'll write a chapter under 6000 words but today is not that day...


	9. through the ice, breaking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sudden reminder that Emma is bi as shit.  
> And reader this is my promise to you: If you can bear with me one more chapter...I swear on my life, in Chapter 10, it’s gonna pay off.
> 
> Trigger warning for, uh...mild...torture...as well as blood and injury.

_Connor._

Emma falls through the rabbit hole, over and over, certain she is awake until the carpet sweeps out from under her and she’s falling again. She’s watching him leave. He’s watching her die. Pain shoots up her arms, held down by icy metal clamps that he either can’t see or that he opts to ignore -- she can’t figure out which is worse.

_Connor!_

Someone sits on her chest, peering down at her from the grey of a distant snowstorm.

She opens her mouth to scream and nothing comes out. A grin, glinting in sterile white light.

_You’ll never leave me, right?_

She tries to move her head, to breathe, but she’s frozen.

Connor leaves her in silence.

* * *

_The soybean field. The creaky swing. Up and back. Up and back. Her stomach tugs as if she’s flying._

_Little bug. You really should come inside now._

_Can’t you see the storm coming?_

* * *

Surely there are some philosophical questions at hand here that cast the entire operation in murky shades of grey. Surely the issue of consent? Surely she’s just in love with the _idea_ of love. Of waking up to his marble-hewn cheekbones. Of the thousand questions in his deep eyes, where light hides. Of the feel of his chest against her fingers. Fingers that now feel clammy, wiping down a forehead caked with the grime of sleep.

This can’t be real...none of it...

She tried to meet Connor half way by taking only half the sleeping pill. Now time ticks by like a glacier melting. Now the floor underneath her wobbles. Her legs shake. Her vision feels at once too close and too far away as she pushes open the door to one of the many spare rooms, her room for right now, her stupid room in this stupid big house where UN soldiers stand like statues in the corners and the floors sheen with a perfect gloss even in the dull shine of the moon.

Something is incorrect. What it is?

Sleep. I can’t. Not yet. Something’s going on. I have to check first. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Everything will be fine. Let me check this first...

She leans into a bannister but can’t look over its edge or she’ll fall forever. Something is down there. Did Connor go down there?

No. She’s dreaming again. She takes in a big, big, big breath, shutting her eyes tight, beginning the chant in her head that shakes off nightmares. _Wake up, wake up, wake up._

“Emma?”

North sits in a lounging chair, overlooking the back gardens in one of the house’s many bay windows -- a moon maiden of Artemis. That’s one of the stories, right? The women who would cut men’s dicks off for looking at them naked in the night...well-deserved, in Emma’s opinion, but if she wasn’t careful, North might cut her dick off. Wait. That didn’t make any sense.

She’s in black yoga pants and a grey sweater, just off the shoulder. Her hair is pulled back. She looks ethereal.

“You look sick.” North sits up further, turning around to better look in Emma’s direction. “Go back to bed.”

“What time is it?”

“4:32 a.m.”

“When is Connor supposed to be back?”

North’s eyebrows twitch together a moment, like she can’t believe she’s having this conversation. Neither can Emma. North is frightening in her beauty, a wolf blessed by the goddess. “He doesn’t tell me his schedule.”

Something about that doesn’t hit right. A discordant note.

“Am I not supposed to know?”

North watches her, frozen. If she had an LED, it’d be spinning yellow now, Emma is sure of it. “What are you talking about?”

“The op.”

“What op?”

Frustration burns between her lungs. “The op you sent him on.”

North stands and starts toward Emma. Emma stumbles back against the bannister. Don’t fall. Why is she so mad? “I didn’t send him on any op,” North says.

“Fine,” Emma says, head spinning thick with medication and worry, “sorry. I’ll pretend I don’t know.”

North snatches out a hand, seizing Emma by the shoulder. “What op?” she repeats.

Cold panic floods her body. She closes her eyes a moment, trying to remember right. “The op...the mission. He said the timetable moved up. New variables. He said Markus…”

Did he say Markus approved it?

Did he say that?

But then suddenly North is frozen again. North is saying something about _I didn’t approve this_ and yelling _Someone get Connor on the line_ and Emma is left on the balcony, looking down into a house shrouded by night. Someone eventually taps her shoulder -- Simon, eyes soft as cotton -- but she’s caught in a nightmare, she knows it this time, a nightmare she won’t fucking wake up from.

“Go to bed, Emma, it’ll be alright.”

“No.” She pushes back, rubs at her eyes, shakes her whole body out. Wake up! “No.”

What did he do?

_What did he do?_

* * *

**_[4:45 a.m.]_ **

Connor watches out the cold-frosted windshield, into the falling snow. He rejects all incoming calls. He doesn’t even look at their names.

His breath, now only driven by old socialization protocols, clouds up in the chill of the car, its engine long cut dead. The self-driving car was directed, all lights off, to the very back of the office park’s empty car lot. The location is an old map pin in one of Detroit’s suburbs that had yet to see any revitalization.

The building is a cube, unsightly and breaking down. Some windows did not reflect the light at all; indeed, some were likely punched out entirely from time and the elements. It looms like a symmetrical, many-eyed mesa over the flat Detroit landscape. A forgotten place on the fringe.

Connor detected no movement for three hours except the storm, ratcheting into a low howl. He settles in for another fifteen minutes of observation before he recalibrates his decision-making process in this regard. Perhaps there is nothing here, after all, and he is either too late or incorrect. But neither conclusion is acceptable. The claws of the frozen garden scratch at his regulators.

Then, just then, he sees the faintest flicker of light from within, nigh imperceptible to the human eye. A calling card. A subtle message against the dark flickers of precipitation.

[PROCESSING.]

He steps out of the car and places a hand on the cracked asphalt (unphased by the cold of the snow, though he does note it) to scan for the electricity lines. He stalks the red glow that emerges in his vision, keeping his body low to the ground, his steps silent.

[NO EXPECTED ELECTRICAL USE FOR MILES. ELECTRICAL LINE TO BUILDING...ILLEGALLY SIPHONED?]

[CONCLUSION: SOMEONE IS WITHIN. CURRENTLY.]

* * *

**_[4:51 a.m.]_ **

The door chimes and Hank steps through, bringing in the clean smell of a building blizzard and the comfort of cracked leather. Emma near throws her sleepy body at him from the nearby bench.

He catches her by the arms. “Emma, what the fu--”

“I need to be in the meeting,” she says, warbly with panic. “They’re trying to shut me out.”

“Woah, woah. What are you talkin’ about?” His voice is gravelly and tight, unreadable and contained, but worry casts his eyes in thick wrinkles. One part of her sleep-drugged brain whispers: _he’s the only one here who really understands._

He is followed by Detective Reed -- which immediately sobers her up, at least a little bit. She’s so fucking tired but she tries to straighten up. Tries to shake her whole brain out of the fog threatening to sweep her up and out into the blizzard.

“What’s he doing here?”

“I’m on alert tonight.” Detective Reed crosses his arms. Straightforward. “What the fuck’s wrong with _you_?”

“Sleep meds didn’t work, _fucker_ ,” she spits, all of her filters gone. She takes a little solace in the way he reels his head back slightly as if slapped.

Hank says nothing. He watches her as if from far away.

“Don’t let them shut me out,” she repeats, whole body shaking.

Hank waits for a long moment, as if considering all the angles, before he drags her by the arm to the meeting room. It’s the one with windows blocked by blackout curtains, the room she’s never been allowed into before; a large painting that reminds her of the sea makes up almost an entire wall. Hank sets her in a chair at a long, paint-stained table. He crosses his arms and stands behind her.

No one questions it. Emma stares at the table, thankful her little plan worked, unsure how it did.

Josh starts talking, mostly to the detectives, and it’s all a blur. Abel hacked Carisa’s brain implant, he says, with a straightforwardness that nearly floors Emma right there. He hacked her connections and so he knows everything that we know. He killed Carisa by frying her whole mind and thus her whole body, and now, apparently, he can use the information at his disposal to come after Emma whenever and however he pleases. Hence the sudden tightened security.

Connor’s reaction flummoxes the New Jericho team, in some respects. That much is clear. He’s always so professional about these things. So straightforward, Markus says. What did he learn to force his hand?

Hank leans forward, as if he can’t take the incompetence anymore.

“Are you serious?” Hank snaps. “He did this shit because he saw a threat to his mission, which is _her_.” He jabs a thumb in Emma’s direction. She suddenly feels very warm and unsure where to put her eyes.

North covers her face in realization. Simon lays a palm on his forehead. Markus lowers his gaze. Only Josh seems interested in pressing further. “He was taken off bodyguard duty--”

“Yeah. My point still fuckin’ stands,” Hank says, frustration pouring out at once. “You can’t take him off any mission once it gets personal and he was suddenly handed the most fragile, fucking important mission of his life. Take a minute to imagine...he was just told he can wait for someone to come _kill her_ or he can meet them head on on his terms. Which do you think he’s gonna choose?”

Emma very pointedly ignores Gavin staring at her like she’s from another planet. “Wait, are you seriously--” he starts, but Hank elbow checks him hard enough he lets out a small _oof._

“Well, what’s our move?” Markus asks. Emma loses track again at this point, as she’s suddenly, dangerously close to sweating through her shirt. They start talking about locations and which one they’d declared the most likely option for a first move and how they’d need to go now because the blizzard is only going to get “fucking worse,” as Hank says, bad enough that automatic cars may not even run. Fine then, North says, we go now.

Emma’s heart rate picks up.

“I’m coming with,” she blurts out.

A lot of noise after that. It’s too dangerous. “You’ll just be a distraction,” she hears Markus say, and she whirls on him.

“Yeah, _exactly!_ I can get his attention!”

The noise continues, but she ignores it, staring down anyone that will give her purchase. Staring at Hank, at Markus, at North, even, plying them with understanding. Someone must get what it’s like to be at the edge of something falling. Someone here must get what it’s like to watch your world slip like silk between your fingers, beautiful and lost and fading and freezing in the snow…

Only North looks back as if she sees.

* * *

**_[4:51 a.m.]_ **

The sliding glass door, slimy with dirt, reveals little within except a wide, carpeted foyer and a low ceiling shadowed with mold and dust. Everything within is an extension of the night. Connor sees his own shadow against a far back wall, mingling with the scattered rushing of the snow. Down a hallway, a single emergency fluorescent glows a yellowing white.

Connor lays a skinless hand against the key panel. Bright red warnings flash in his vision. [MULTIPLE ALARMS DETECTED. FLIPPED TRIGGER ALARMS DETECTED. CALCULATING HACK…]

His scans run hot, whirring against the jagged programs laced throughout the building’s shockingly complex security protocols. Time clicks by with a physicality that makes his eyes squeeze shut.

[ALARMS DISARMED.]

[SECONDARY ALARMS DISABLED.]

[WARNING: SECONDARY ALARMS MAY RESTART AND ALERT THOSE PRESENT. TRACKING…]

He pulls away. Calculations indicate that it will be impossible to guess when the silent trip alarm will trigger, warning whoever is within that he’d deactivated the alarms. He forces the door aside with a grunt and steps inside, moving with a purpose.

It’s now or never.

His booted feet leave faint prints in the dirt and muck. At least he had put on his real police uniform, the one with minor bullet protection. Such things feel indulgent for an android who can only be truly killed with a shot to the head, but he thinks of Hank’s face when he tried to explain as much the first time he was presented with it a few months ago -- _You’ll wear the damn vest, Connor_ \-- and lays a hand on it for a moment. He’s wearing it now as a form of apology for whatever happens after this. He’s wearing it now to fulfill his promise to Emma.

_I don’t fail._

The corridors are dark and windowless, with spotty emergency lighting that buzzes with age. Something drips against metal -- perhaps coolant from the HVAC system. The air is musty and thick. The Emma that lingers in his thoughts nearly doubles over in disgust at the stench. _You shouldn’t be here, Con._

He follows the path of activated lights. He can’t shake the feeling he’s being welcomed somewhere, that somehow, despite all his preparation, Abel knows Connor is coming for him. He follows up a staircase, cement and industrial, his steps echoing with a strange finality into the greying dark.

He pushes through another door and down another hallway, lights flickering.

But then the hallway opens up into a vast, open space and a wall of grimy windows that brighten the room into a dank grey. Desks and cubicles once would have lined this space.

Now, only long, metal tables remain. Upon which lie androids.

So _many androids._

He does not see the tell-tale flashing of any LEDs. He walks up and down the rows, scanning faces.

[NO LIFE SIGNS...NO LIFE SIGNS...NO LIFE SIGNS…]

What is left of their faces is blank in death, even though many of their bodies are ravaged. Limbs missing, skin turned off, optical units removed or altered. Under some of their Cyberlife white plastic skin, he could see faint traces of strange colors -- a vague green or a sickly orange or even a bruised purple. At least one seemed to be in the process of melting; he turned away, the acrid smell of poisoned thirium making even his sensors revolt. The androids are near unidentifiable.   

Thirium experiments.

_But for what?_

_How many androids did he take before we even caught on?_

His eye catches on a flashing red LED.

[MINOR LIFE SIGNS DETECTED.]

He closes the distance in three steps. He looks down upon the android -- a WR600 unit that uncomfortably reminds him of one of Emma’s closer android acquaintances. Their skin flickers in and out of existence, waving like a sheet on a clothesline, though their grey eyes are wide open, unseeing. His mind spins with values of analysis. The risks of interfacing are high. And yet.

He wraps his fingers around the wrist of the android and peels his skin back.

<AAAAYYGGGYGGAGAAAA&^&%&^^&^%&^^*&^&*&%^&()_(*&%^%$^%*(&>

<dOnT dO iT>

<gET aWAY!!!!!!*&^&^*%&^%^%&^%>

[MAN WALKING INTO A DISTANT ROOM, COMPUTER, MAN IN A TRAIL OF FIRE, EVERYTHING IS BURNING WHY WON’T IT STOP BURNING WHY WON’T I JUST DEACTIVATE(*&^&&*(]

[8&&&(&*()**&%^&%( _tests inconclusive...regenerative ability possible in this formulation but no promises as to how it would interact with older systems---]_

_ <GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN-------------------------------> _

The connection severs with a drawn out, wordless screech.

Connor stumbles backward into the metal gurney behind him, blinking fiercely. The images speed through his processors like a virus. He takes in a sharp breath of the choking air to try and cool his systems, but no matter how many times he attempts a base systems diagnostic, the images will not fade in their intensity.

The WR600’s LED fades, finally, into nothingness.

Connor did not even get a name...

He walks away, away, away from the lines of dead androids, following the broken memories like stone steps in a garden. He heads toward a distant a light coming from a terminal in the corner of the room, just behind a semi-closed door and molding drywall. Perhaps it was the old corner office on this floor, back when such things mattered.

A terminal within glows a faint white in idleness -- strange and ancient as far as technology goes, an original model that was likely used just after the replacement of personal computer desktops. But it has parts added to it from modern eras that stick out in their sleekness, their smaller nature. Someone has updated this one.

Connor slips behind the desk.

[PASSWORD]

He places a hand against the dull touchscreen, clearly ancient in design.

[...ACCESS GRANTED.]

A files database. His eyes dance over the screen.

[ANDROID BIOMECHANIC SCHEMATICS. CYBERLIFE BLUEPRINTS. TYPICALLY CLASSIFIED BEHIND SEVERAL LAYERS OF SECURITY.] _And yet here they are. All about thirium and the complexities that go into a humanized bioframe, separated into clear modules…_

[NOTES ON ANDROID SENSORS. QUESTIONS ON PAIN.]

Connor’s systems whir at top capacity. The thrill of the hunt mixed with a dawning horror as he turns to a new set of files.

[...SCHEMATICS UNCLEAR. NOT OF ANY KNOWN CYBERLIFE ANDROID. SKELETON INCOMPLETE.]

[...SYSTEM OF IMPLANTS?]

[SEARCHING…]

[SIMILARITY CATALOGUED: CARISA CHO BRAIN IMPLANT. ERROR: DOES NOT MATCH MUSCULOSKELETAL RECORD OF CARISA CHO.]

He flicks through a series of files. Notes on biomechanics, notes on sensory input, notes on the messages thirium sends through an android’s body. Questions about pain. About how to end it. About whether thirium could be made adaptable to other biomechanic systems or forms of wet ware…

Income through jobs listed on the dark web...large chunks of money, funneled into a variety of dummy accounts...

Connor nearly steps away from the terminal just then, except he catches sight of another file, incongruous with the others. Simply called:

[SERAH]

Connor opens it, half expecting more horrific images of androids splayed apart. Instead, the first file is…

The face of a young girl…

Some sort of ID photo. The background is a beige blankness.

Olive skin, freckles splotching her cheeks, her forehead, her chin. Dark brown eyes, wide with youth and, it seems, a sort of distant sadness. Auburn hair cropped short, but even then, the curl makes itself known.

He does not even have to perform a scan to know. He knows akin to the human English saying -- like the back of his hand. Like the inside of his own mind. She’s there with him now, looking over his shoulder…

_Emma._

[ALERT. ALARM TRIGGERED.]

Connor looks up, and sees a shadow pass by the door to the corner office. His fine-tuned systems move just as a gunshot rings out in the enclosed space.

[MINOR DAMAGE TO SHOULDER COMPONENT #4857s]

Another gunshot.

[MINOR DAMAGE TO ARM COMPONENT #8573a]

He keeps moving, calculating trajectories, forcing perfectly aligned shots to hit unnecessary parts of his body instead. He pulls out his own gun in a single, swift motion, firing.

He hears it connect to the shadowed target with a too-human _umph_ , and he picks up his speed, barreling through the doorway. Another shot goes off just as Connor connects with the target.

[DAMAGE TO CHEST COMPONENT #8642c]

Static spasms across his vision. The vest stopped the worst of it, but the point blank range of the shot did little to help him. Thirium trickles down his arm inside his thick jacket from the earlier shot. Even so, he and the suspect fall to the ground in a loud thud, the two nearly collapsing onto a nearby gurney. Both of their guns scatter to the ground, bouncing away.

Connor stares down, pressing an arm against the man’s chest.

Abel’s slate blue eyes stare back, wild and wide with fury. His large lips curl into a tense smile.

“I was hoping,” the man spits, “it’d be _you._ ”

“You’re under arrest,” Connor says, pressing into the man’s wound to disable him. Abel shouts in pain.

And then that shout melts into a laugh.

And Connor is somehow, inhumanly, impossibly, shoved to the side with the force of a truck. Abel’s shouting continues, wordless, as he stumbles to a standing position. Another shout of pain -- and yet it seems to invigorate him. Seems to leave him unphased, despite the gunshot wound pooling dark in his shoulder.

Connor rises and rushes him again, aiming a swift punch to his throat, but Abel spins just slightly away as if he could predict it, laughing with sick joy.

“You’re the best Cyberlife could do, huh?”

Connor doesn’t listen. He engages, wordless, whipping out fists to grapple with him. He grabs Abel’s wrist and _twists_ until it snaps, pushing forth as he does so. Most humans would have been distracted by the pain. Most humans would have been downed.

Abel just shouts and kicks out, tripping Connor. Connor collides with the ground in a tumble.

Abel reacts to pain like a human. But he ignores it like an android.

Connor scrambles for the closest gun as Abel looms forth. He pulls it up and aims--

Click. Out of ammo.

“Come on, RK800. I just want to _talk_.”

Connor throws the empty gun at Abel’s head. It connects with a sick, wet _thunk_ , sending blood rushing down his forehead, nearly into Abel’s eyes. Connor rushes him again, seizing Abel by the upper arms, spinning him around to try and handcuff him --

Abel slams his head back, connecting with Connor’s nose.

Connor again stumbles back, but this time he feels hands grab at him, multiple hands, more than just Abel--

[(*&(*ERROR)(*)(*]

His systems burn. Electricity pulses through him, through him and the multiple risen dead androids next to him, locking their arms -- and therefore his -- in place.

The burning suddenly ceases. His legs have given out beneath him but he’s held up in place by the rigor mortis of the dead androids all around him. He pulls and pulls.

He can’t move. His systems are still resetting.

Abel stands over him.

“So you found me out,” he says, skin stained red, his wrist twisted the wrong way, his shirt blackened with blood. Fury makes all his larger-than-life features stretch into a mask. “But, you know, it’s funny in a way. I thought for sure you’d know more, but...you don’t.” He steps closer. “Pain doesn’t really mean anything to me anymore. It just clouds everything all up. Makes things...difficult.”

Abel fishes something Connor can’t see out of his pocket and then places his hands, slick with effluence, on Connor’s face.

“So how about we even the playing field a little bit?”

[WARNING: PROGRAM INTRUSION DETECTED(*(&##@_]

Images, flashing before his eyes. Memory records he doesn’t summon, suddenly playing like a movie he forgot to turn off.

_“Your job is to keep her safe and find the people who did this. It’s not a conflict of interest to care about her.”_

_“Just think of it like a mini vacation. A working vacation.”_

_Extending her arm out, watching him with a raised brow. “Emma Ibori. You aren’t gonna arrest me, right?”_

He feels the connection stutter. A hesitation. Shock.

“Emmie?”

Abel’s voice. Shaky and high and cracking with fear and -- _hope_.

And then the intrusion blazes forth with a ferocity Connor had never known.

[WARNINGWARNINGWNARININGIFA]

Connor screams.

_Dan’s Diner. Emma laughing. Egg spits out of her mouth._

_Emma, sitting on the couch at Hank’s, explaining why Legolas can see far distances--_

_Emma, eyes wavering, gun up against the red and blue light--_

_Emma, sitting in the speaker's garden on a rare nice November day, eating a strawberry. He’s watching her eyes. Curious at how deep they go._

_Whatcha thinking about?_

_And he doesn't know what to say..._

“N-n-no!” Connor forces out, teeth gritted in _pain_ , in _real pain_. How much time has passed? It’s stopped mattering. “Stop--aaaaaah!”

[DANGEROUS STRESS LEVELS DETECTED. TOP SECRET INTRUSION DETECTED.]

[ZEN PROGRAM ACTIVATED.]

_He braces, he braces, he braces for the cold -- but there is no cold, there’s barely anything at all. A protocol without the surrounding coding, long erased from his system. An emptiness. A black box._

_A woman’s voice._

_Connor! Fight back! Don’t let him in here…_

That’s not Amanda.

[INTRUSION ENDED. ZEN PROGRAM CLOSING…]

And then, as if it’d never come at all, the fire ends.

He blinks, and Abel is before him, tears streaming, water mixing with blood, leaving pale rivulets down his dirty face. Shadows from the storm dance across his face.

“That’s  _my_ Emmie,” Abel says. “You don’t -- why --” The man takes a step back, hands releasing Connor. “You’re a machine. You took--you can't _love_ \--she, that laugh, it's just for...”

Connor tries to free himself from the androids, but his arms re-receive signal with painful slowness. He reaches, as hard as he can against the restraints, for the weapon stored on his thigh. He will bend them. He will break them, if he has to.

But Abel suddenly shouts, shouts as if the words were torn away from years of waiting, building for decades, layers of pain sedimented into stone breaking all at once.

“ ** _GET HER OUT OF YOUR HEAD!_ ** ”

Abel seizes Connor by the neck, ready to twist--

Connor stabs him in the side with his knife. And _shoves_ him away, as hard as he can manage being still partly held back by plastic statues.

Abel stumbles back. Finally, finally, it seems he may succumb to the pain--

“You--you can’t--”

But then he stumbles forward--

Connor can’t act fast enough, his limbs are still too entangled to run, the arms snaking around his torso--

Abel finds his other knife on his other leg and _stabs_ \--

[MAJOR DAMAGE. TORSO #2972i]

“I will...save her...”

_Save her?_

_You won’t touch her!_

And _stabs_ \--

[MAJOR DAMAGE. TORSO #9263i #5029i]

_You made a promise! Don’t let him win!_

Abel tries to stab again--

So Connor slams his head forward and collides with Abel’s face. The man stumbles away, knife clattering to the ground. He goes and goes, into a gurney, sending it flying across the floor, falling backward.

[THIRIUM LOSS IMMINENT]

Connor hears his name. Someone, yelling his name, far away--

_CONNOR!_

Is it the woman on his shoulder, crying in fury? Or is it -- is it...

[POWER LOSS IMMINENT. BEGINNING TO SHUT DOWN NON-ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS.]

Abel turns tail and stumbles away, fast as he can go.

“Come back here!” Connor shouts, but his voice feels wrong. The modulators aren’t working right. He’s never heard himself sound so metallic before and it makes everything run hot and cold at once. Fear. _Fear._ “ABEL!”

* * *

**_[5:11 a.m.]_ **

The storm raged, unpitying. Snow and ice spun like tiny knives. Emma stomps after Hank and the others as they enter the office building with their guns up.

“Ibori, stop!”

It’s Gavin, arms suddenly snaking around her middle, trying to hold her back. For her own good, she knows, she knows, she’s so fucking tired of it, even if the worry in his voice is almost genuine, even if he’s really just doing his job.

“Let me go!” Emma shouts.

“Fucking _stop it_ , you’ll just get in the way!”

The sound of something shattering.

“CONNOR!”

She shoves an elbow back with exacting proficiency. Gavin doubles over in shock long enough for her to slip from his grasp and run after them, slipping on the icy asphalt as she goes. He gives chase, but he doesn’t stop her. Props to Detective Reed, she supposes, far in the back of her mind, for realizing early on what everyone else would rather forget. _She will do what she fucking wants._

She remembered to grab her own gun, in her holster now, and she lays her hand on it as she goes. Drug-induced exhaustion is chased away by pure adrenaline as she dives into the dark, the musty building, the mold so thick she nearly coughs.

She follows into the dangerous quiet, heart thrumming in her ears, a strange focus falling into place. The halls are dark. Like a light that only she can see, she spots footprints heading a different way, so she takes a different path than the police making their way through the building, seeking the stairs that spiral upward.

She barely sees whatever passes her by on the walls. She’s got tunnel vision now, thinking only of her single task as she enters another hallway, a wide open space with a wall of windows...

The shadows of the storm fly through the room like ghosts. The air is cold. Her teeth chatter.

Strange, long beds line the room…

The tangy metallic smell of blood mixed with the chemical high of thirium suddenly floods her nostrils and she whirls away, hands up to her mouth to hold back the instinct to puke, to cough, to run--

“Emma?”

That voice. She doesn’t know it, it’s too metallic, too scratchy. And yet--

His arms are held back tightly by a pile of white-plastic androids, face splotched with the white of his true skin, a mixture of thirium and red blood splattering his face, his free hands, his dark police clothes--

Connor.

Thirium, dripping in thick pools to the floor underneath him, deep enough to form seas of their own…

She’s stumbling in front of him. _Wake up,_ she screams inside. _Wake up, this isn’t real, this can’t be real._

She reaches out a shaking hand to his shoulder. He’s yelling something in that strange voice. “Abel is getting away! What are you doing here!?”

_I’m sorry, Emma. We did everything we could._

_Beaten, bloody, peaceful on the gurneys, never to open their eyes again. Momma. Dadda. No. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. That can’t be them. We had so much more time left, I was just--I just needed to try it on my own for a while…_

She draws a bloodstained hand back.

She can’t breathe.

“Connor!” The sharp rebuke of Hank, from behind her, somewhere, far away.

She’s not dreaming.

She looks into his dark brown eyes, alight with a fury she can’t name. Wetness rolls down his face. He pulls against the shackles like a bear on a leash, pushing her away with his knees, his shoulder, his palms--

Shoving her away--

_FORGET ME!_ _HE’S GETTING AWAY!_

Fear seizes her body. At the memories, at his voice, screeching and wrong and _shoving_. At his blood, pooling faster as he bats her away…

_GET OUT OF HERE!_

At his shouting--

_GO!_

She turns and pushes past Hank. Past him and Gavin, watching in horror, past Officer Chen, past navy blue-clad UN guards. She hears her own name. She can’t get away. She runs, runs, runs from the past, coming to life again. The living nightmare she thought she buried, alive as the smell of cleaning fluid, alive as the blood still staining her hands.

Someone grabs her.

Shakes her.

“Emma, calm down.”

North.

“We’re going to fix this.”

“No,” Emma says. “It’s too late.”

North looks her in the eye and she does not let go. “No, it isn’t,” she says. “Because we’re not going to give him a choice. Are we?”

Emma can’t speak.

“ _Are we?_ ”

This is why she should never have come. Not just here.

Detroit. 

She should never have come. What is she supposed to do now with the rage in her heart? What is she supposed to do, losing him like this? She can’t take another loss like this, not now. Why can’t it just be her? Just take her already, God! Stop dragging it out! Just let her--

North slaps her across the face.

The world spins.

“Get it together. Fight it, Emma. _He needs you.”_

But she’s not strong enough.

She doesn’t know how to be needed like that.

It’s much easier

to run.

* * *

 

.

..

…

….

…..

……

……..

[REINITIATING.]

[...]

[H E A L I N G P R O G R A M: S U C C E S S]

[RECORDINGS SAVED.]

Abel will not forget. He’s never forgotten one detail about her so long as he has lived.

But everything is agony.

Her face, her true face, laughing, smiling, seen through the eyes of a machine.

Why couldn’t he have moved **f a s t e n o u g h** \--

Why couldn’t it have been him!

[TRACKER ACTIVATED.]

Remember.

Soon the years of pain won’t matter.

Fulfill the promise.

Make us both whole.

Bring her home.

[PLAYBACK: RECORDING 003]

_“We’ll be together_

_f o r e v e r.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> connor ya done did it this time  
> shout out to janisilverstorm for yelling with me about emma and her friends who will soon be more thoroughly a part of this world.
> 
> thanks so much for reading!!! Stay tuned!! I promise the long suffering will end soon (right before it, inevitably, gets worse)


	10. at the surface of the earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: 9,715 words. But I finally get to add the fluff tag to this shit. 
> 
> Ryker (them/they pronouns) is the creation of my dear @janisilverstorm, and the lightly mentioned Chase is the creation of lovely @caitlynmellark on tumblr. The scene in which they are semi-introduced may be a bit indulgent for me, but I am hoping it also depicts that Emma does a bad job of remembering that people give a shit about her. :)

The church doors open with a thunderous creak. A crowd of people storms in as the first peek of a wintry dawn shines weakly through the stained glass.

Somehow the glass has been preserved, through time and war and the elements. Emma remembers the strange feeling in her heart, seeing the light through the green-blue windows while she sized the place up for reconstruction back in February. Seeing the beauty of the past mixed with the vicious graffiti of an angry present.

The place has a roof now, at least. A roof and a clean floor free of leaks and dirt and better pews in proper places and back offices set up for android repair. It smells like cold stone and incense. It almost feels consecrated; only the graffiti shouting messages of freedom remain as a sign of what it once had been..

Rushing androids -- and at least two on-alert Corps android mechanics -- prepare a barely functioning Connor for emergency repair.

_Is the thirium drip ready?_

_Get him on the gurney, on 3!_

_1...2...3!_

_Someone start up the biocomponent terminal._

Emma can’t look. She stops before the altar, something reconstructed after the fact -- a circling tower of candles, glittering and smoky and warm. They say it’s the spot where Markus decided to demonstrate for peace. It’s full of prayers to someone or something. Hope. Faith. Questions and wondering.

She falls to her knees and waits. Because that’s all that’s left now.

* * *

[TIME BEFORE SHUTDOWN: -00:3:59]

Snow, everywhere. On his cheeks, in his eyes.

[TIME BEFORE SHUTDOWN: -00:2:01]

Will he reach the magic stone in time? Will he...will... _please don’t push me out. Please don’t end it all._

The telltale silver hair of Hank. Two eye colors -- Markus.

A flash of red hair by candlelight…

He reaches out...but someone pushes his arm down.

[MIND PALACE INACCESSIBLE. ENERGY SAVING MODE ACTIVATED.]

“Okay, Connor, are you with us?” Simon? “We’re going to plug you into the terminal. This may not feel great.”

His body jerks.

[*)*)^$&#UNKNOWN ATTACHMENT]

[REPAIR TERMINAL ONBOARD]

[...]

[SYSTEMS ON STANDBY]

* * *

Emma lays her cheek on the top of her knees as she curls up inside one of the pews.

She thinks about calling Ryker, to talk about nothing. How long has it been since she could do that? Think about something normal. Hear her friend the gardener android -- one of the first androids she helped rebuild their house, one of the first to accept her into their home and ask after her and make her feel like coming to Detroit wasn’t a mistake -- go on about plants.

Or perhaps Anjali. Ask after her new house, her sculptures, her family she’s been looking for.

Or maybe her aunt and uncle. Her aunt would be happy to fill the silence with chatter. Maybe Emma could tell her the truth.

Even Valerie...

But she feels an exhaustion down to her very bones, even as the sky outside turns a brighter blue, because a part of her knows this is how she’s always dealt with problems.

A part of her wonders if they both saw a little bit too much truth in each other.

His wild eyes...the mission first, only the mission, go after Abel, get away from me…

She _ran_.

A soft hand lays on her shoulder.

“You don’t have to stay here,” North says. “You can go home.”

But she wouldn’t be going home. She’s not sure, in this moment, exactly where that is.

“No,” Emma says, voice hard. “I want to be here.”

North leaves her hand for a long moment. Considering something.

“You’re angry. I know that. But don’t be stupid about this.” Despite her harsh words, there is a softness to this comment that shakes Emma awake. “Don’t tune everyone out.”

Emma presses her eyes into her knees.

“I know you care about him,” North says, almost begrudgingly. “Don’t punish him for that. Or yourself.”

* * *

CYBERLIFE INC.

MODEL RK800

SERIAL#: #313 248 317 - 51

BIOS 8.0 REVISION 0501

REBOOT…

MEMORY RECOVERED

LOADING OS…

SYSTEM INITIALIZATION

CHECKING BIOCOMPONENTS……..ERRORS DETECTED

DIAGNOSTIC……...REBOOT ACCEPTABLE. CODE: 85740

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS...OK

INITIALIZING AI ENGINE...OK

ALL SYSTEMS...OK

READY.

…

He opens his eyes to a blaring white light. His systems are still resetting. Static undulates across his system.

He closes his eyes again.

A whisper from elsewhere.

_Out of the blizzard again._

_And yet..._

* * *

Hank takes a moment to observe. The operation room is an old office backroom with a single, tiny window filled now with mid-morning sun. Connor lies on a clean metal gurney, still as stone. His head rests on a small pillow. His mouth is turned downward, his brows are furrowed, his jaw is clenched, his eyes are closed.

The mechanics say he’s gone through diagnostic successfully and sufficiently rebooted. He just needs time to recalibrate to his new internal biocomponents before they finish repairs. But he still lies there like a dead log.

He looks...miserable. And Hank can’t stay silent any longer.

“Connor.”

In an instant, the android is sitting up, eyes wide with concern, head swiveling until his gaze lands on Hank.

“Hank!”

He nearly flies off the table-bed-thing before Hank shoves him back down with his palms. So much work is left to be done and though, logically, he knows Connor is made of stronger stuff than flesh and blood, stuff that won’t tear in a single instant (except it did, didn’t it?), it’s Hank that needs him to stay still. It’s Hank that needs to recalibrate.

At least that computer isn’t plugged into the back of his head anymore.

“Hank,” Connor says again. Connor’s hands slide over Hank’s as if confirming that it’s him before the man pulls them back. And then: “Where is she? Is she okay?”

Of course his first question is about Emma, which would break Hank’s heart all over again if it had room to crack. No ‘where am I?’ or ‘what happened?’

“ _She’s_ fine,” Hank mutters. “ _You_ almost bled to death.”

Connor normally would have sassed him back. But he says nothing, as if stuck in the mud somewhere in his head, and that shakes Hank more than seeing him like this: shirtless, stained with blue blood, part of him shimmering Cyberlife white.

“She’s furious, _I’m_ furious. What the fuck were you thinking, going off like that?”

But Hank knows the answer. He just wants to hear him goddamn say it -- wants to hear him, for once, be honest with himself so that Hank can fulfill their bargain and be honest, too. That’s the agreement. That’s how they get by.

It’s still almost too much. Connor’s breath hitches, all too-naturally, and Hank grabs his shoulder to support the boy and himself.

“In many of the probabilities…I had nothing left to hold on to,” Connor says, voice flattened by whatever emotion he was suppressing. “I was going to lose everything. My job. My place. My…”

Connor struggles, as if he cannot find the proper word. His eyes dart away.

It’s striking, sometimes, how much Connor reminds him of Cole. And at first that was a disastrous thing; Connor is, also, too dangerously different. But these days it feels, in some respects, like another chance.

“Listen to me.” Hank leans down to try and catch his gaze again. “Listen.” Connor finally looks at him. “You nearly fucked this up as bad as you possibly could have. But if you can’t be honest with yourself about why you did this, then you deserve what you got. Because it’s just going to happen again.”

It’s harsh. It’s tough. It’s what Connor needs to know. He takes Connor by both shoulders and squeezes hard so that he knows the android feels it, somewhere.

Connor squints, looking at something in the middle distance.

“I’m sorry to make you worry, Hank. I’m sorry if it makes you feel like you don’t matter. That is not the truth.”

“Shut up,” Hank says softly, batting down all those old emotions. Connor needs him right now. Not the other way around. Not here. “I know that. I’m not the one getting chased by some freak across the whole of Detroit.” He shakes Connor by the shoulders lightly. “Tell her the truth, Connor.”

Hank knows he’s onto something because Connor does not even ask which one.

“I’m sorry that I failed,” Connor says, voice small.

“Stop that. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

* * *

The repairs are exhausting -- he can think of no better word to describe the gnawing daze ribbing at his processors from sitting still for many hours at a time. Old programming demands he make progress on his mission. [FIND ABEL. WHERE IS EMMA?]

Some of the biocomponents have to be fine-tuned to account for the fact that few things matched him exactly, being a prototype, and that takes a while. And many of the connecting lines in his abdomen have to be manually refastened. Every time someone makes an error -- which is very few times, but still -- welt-red ERROR messages fire in his vision, and some of his musculature twitches uncontrollably.

Memories appear without request: Knives sending white-cold interference throughout his body. Gunshots, rattling his equilibrium. The slow fuzz that sets in as thirium leaks out of his wounds...the metallic shrieking from his own vocoder...

The face Emma made. Or perhaps a nightmare version of her...staring at him in bright-faced fear. In fear of him.

“Connor?” Simon has to softly prod more than once. “Come back. It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

“Where is--”

“Everyone is waiting for you just outside. I promise.”

The sun passes its apex in the sky before he is considered in full working order. Connor slips into a pair of jeans, a heavy jacket and a soft, grey sweater that Hank had brought over earlier and takes a moment to look at himself in the mirror.

Free of blemishes. No signs of the struggle that had taken place hours before except in his memory bank and somewhere deep back in his eyes.

He feels different. The incongruence does not compute with any sort of simplicity.

But he steps out, finally, into the old sanctum and one aspect of his program stops itching.

The stained glass bathes the room in cool blue-green light. Emma is taking up an entire pew to herself, lying on her back pondering what looks to be a half-eaten turkey and swiss sandwich held above her face, cascading her in crumbs as she holds it aloft into a light beam. She’s only half watching it, it seems, chewing mildly as she stares at the ceiling.

His walking cycle stutters for a moment. The warm feeling that wracks his sensors nearly turns him back around for recalibration at its strength. Surely something was not fastened correctly?

But seeing her there, in this moment outside time...

Her head turns toward him and she bolts upright, sandwich forgotten on the seat. She stares at him, and he very pointedly resists scanning her, knowing she would feel it, fearing she would reject him for it, but he sees her shoulders relax and the way her forehead loses some of its wrinkling and he knows, surely, she must feel the same relief that he does in this moment.

But then, in another instant, she’s standing on her feet, fists at her sides, glaring.

“Fuck you,” she says, voice shaky. She is trying to joke, but her posture betrays it. “You just stepped out of a fuckin’ salon or something.”

He smiles. He smiles despite knowing it makes no sense. He doesn’t care. She waited here for him and that fact makes all his sensors ring out in feelings he can’t quite process.

But she doesn't smile back.

Only now does he see tear streaks on her face glittering fiercely in the fading light. Only now does he see a faint bruised welt on her cheek in the exact size and dimension of one of North’s hands.

He steps toward her. She steps back, against the pew.

A fizzing spark jolts behind his eyes.

_Is she afraid?_

“I--” she starts. “Can’t.”

He tries to go to her.

She whirls on her boot heel and walks straight back out the double doors of the sanctuary and into the snow.

* * *

Emma sits in one of the UN black cars and sets her forehead pointedly against the window so that she doesn’t have to look at anyone. She feels the seat sink in as someone sits next to her, but she doesn’t look at them. A pressing exhaustion keens loudly behind her eyes, but sleep feels years away.

Connor goes with Hank to his car. She watches outside her window and catches Connor swiveling his head as if looking for something, and her heart fucking _squeezes_.

She hasn’t felt so much shit in so long and there’s nowhere for it to go. She’s running out of space and she can’t break down here in the car, here in front of strangers who can watch and question and dig deep inside where even she doesn’t want to go.

She shuts her eyes, and does not open them again until they make it back to the Speaker’s house.

No one asks after her when she wordlessly goes up the stairs. Perhaps they can see it, the electricity building just under her skin. She shuts the door to her spare room, slips to the floor and curls into a ball to think.

She’s being a little shit, she knows that, she should just let this go, she should just let the anger die, but she can’t. She’ll lose whatever’s been keeping her alive if she lets it all go.

_But goddammit, she can’t fucking do this anymore._

She pulls open her door, ready to find wherever she had thrown her coat and boots, ready to stomp over to Hank’s house if she must, ready to let him have it because she really might die if--

And Connor is standing right there, hand up, ready to knock.

Connor in that damn grey sweater.

“You--”

“There you are,” he says.

It's so heartbreaking, the way he says it, like he's coming up for air. It sends tears straight to her eyes and the words right out her lungs.

"Do you have any idea how fucking bad that could have gone? If i hadn't woken up? If i hadn't found North? If..."

She’s momentarily stunned. So much could have gone wrong...

He takes advantage and pushes into the room. He closes the door behind him with a click, looking down at her unreadably.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" she snaps before he can say anything.

“I knew we had to move quickly, and no one else seemed to feel the same way.”

“So you lied to me, you lied to everyone -- just to _make a point?_ ” she says. “You have no idea what it’s like to be awake waiting for you and then, _and then_ , only because of a gut feeling, watch my worst fucking nightmare come to life. Do you--”

He tries to gain advantage. “I can be easily repaired. You _cannot_. And it is my upmost priority to--”

“Just shut up for _five seconds_ about your stupid goddamn priority!” She is full on shouting now, unafraid of who could be listening. “ _You could have died!_ Do you understand? You could have bled to death alone in a goddamn office building because you thought you knew better!”

He leans backward a moment, eyes scanning her as if trying to re-find his balance. “I could not just wait for him to strike--”

“Well, why not!” She takes in a hot breath. “Everyone _else_ could!”

"Because!" he says, raising his voice for the first time. "Because _my_ death doesn’t matter!”

She takes a step back. His eyes are hard as coals.

"Stop that.”

“If it meant you would be safe, I would do whatever it takes!” he near shouts, like he’s started off on something that he’s unable to reel back in, desperate and winding. “A thousand more times, the exact same way. If it would guarantee you would never be hurt again...I...I _would_ rather be dead, Emma, than let him take you away from me!”

Tears stream out of his eyes. His LED is blood red.

She feels punched in the chest.

This was too dangerous.

Too far.

“No.” She takes a step forward. “Stop.”

“You’re so much more _alive_ ,” he says through tears, like he’s falling into somewhere else.

_No._

She has to conquer her anger, her frustration. She has to shove it away, dig down underneath pride where it hurts, where the truth lives, and be an adult about this, be someone who _loves_ him.

She puts her hands, slowly, against his chest, and he takes in a breath loud enough that even she can hear it. “No, Connor. That’s not true.”

His eyes are wide. His face is wet. A world without his inquisitive stares, the quiet way he laughs, the way he waits just by her door, his deeply real loveliness...impossible. But it all blurs in her own vision.

She moves her hands to his cheeks.

Her Connor.

“You’re the reason I’ve made it through these weeks at all.”

She pulls him slightly toward her until their foreheads touch, holding his gaze, and he lets her. She’s diving off into the unknown now. She’s doing the stupid thing. The only thing.

“So you _can’t_ throw yourself away. Be-because you mean...the whole world...”

He’s blinking down into her gaze as her words choke off. His mouth opens in shock. She presses on.

“Just...stay with me. That’s all I want…” A tear rolls free from her eye. “I’m sorry I got mad. I’m sorry I yelled. I was just so afraid I was going to _lose_ you--”

And suddenly he pulls her fully against him, burying his head in her shoulder, his whole body shaking and warm. His arms wrap tightly around her lower back, pulling her until she’s nearly on her tip-toes leaning against him. She presses her face into his chest, throwing her arms around his neck.

Her body heaves with sobs torn from somewhere dark and lonely. One of his hands reaches up to cradle the back of her head.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, voice tight with his own tears. “I’m so sorry I scared you. I’m sorry I...didn’t think, I just wanted him to fail...”

Something deep within her rumbles. It feels like letting go.

It isn’t supposed to go like this, but it was going like this for such a long time. Everything is tilting. She's falling off the face of the earth.

_At the DPD, at Lieutenant Anderson’s desk, looking for Hank Anderson. Scan his desk. Find out._

_She reaches a hand out but its not her hand..._

She leans back with a small gasp, searching his face. She blinks away the fire behind her eyes, finding it hard to focus, but then he places a hand on her cheek, so soft and careful, and everything sharpens.

“Can I tell you something?” he asks softly. He stares right into her eyes. His other hand rests lightly at her waist.

A high-pitched keening sound starts in her head. She can barely nod.

“I’ve tried to pretend that it is otherwise,” he says, struggling with words in a way she’d never heard before. “That you aren’t here, with me,” he says, touching his forehead for a moment, “always. That I can do this job and not be distracted. But I…”

She sees stars flashing.

“I can't pretend anymore…” He rubs her cheek with his thumb. “That I don't want to be with you, more than anything else.”

At first, she worries her own thoughts just came out of her mouth, but her heartbeat rises when she realizes he’s the one that said it. She tries to find the words. “Are...are you...do you know how I…I want...”

The words die in her throat. He leans forward until their foreheads touch, their noses cross, and his lips are nearly against hers. His interruption feels a part of her. “ _Tell me,_ ” he whispers against her, desperate. “Tell me what you want. Anything. Please.”

Everything breaks.

“I’m in love with you,” she says. “I love you. I’m sorry, if that’s--”

She’s cut off as he takes in a sharp breath, so close against her skin. Something in the air cracks.

But then words stop making sense.

He finally closes the distance.

Their lips meet in a moment of warmth so blessedly high all thought leaves her body. His arms wrap around her back, pulling her tightly against his chest as her hands touch his cheeks, his neck, run through his hair. She feels each of his fingers as they spread across her back, prompting her to sigh. He presses the advantage, deepening the kiss with a low sound in the back of his throat, heat building so intently she's afraid she'll melt right then and there.

She breaks away to take a single shaky breath and his mouth lingers on her cheekbones, kissing all of her old tears away.

* * *

Connor can’t get close enough. He wants to hear all her thoughts, breathe in all her memories. He wants to be housed in her gaze, forever.

_The snow down a Detroit street...boots he had never worn, clearly on his feet..._

In his arms, he can feel her legs near give out from exhaustion, and his processors click forward. He picks her up, one arm under her knees and one across her upper back.

She gasps as they break away. “What are you--”

“You were going to fall.”

He sets her on the bed, moving to kneel next to her on the floor so that she has proper space -- but she grabs him fiercely by the shoulders.

“Don’t you dare leave me now,” she says, a laugh behind her voice. And that does it -- that bubble of joy that colors his whole life. He leans in and kisses her until he presses her into the mattress, processors flashing white as she sighs into his mouth. He climbs effortlessly onto the bed, careful not to lay his entire weight against her.

 _She_ loves _you._

 _She loves_ you _…_

She pulls away to breathe and a part of him, a vague part not intended to be made, nearly cries out for her return. His fingers slip just beneath her shirt, pressing into the warm skin just above her hip bones, trying to remember all of it.

“Your injuries…” she gasps.

“They’re alright,” he whispers. He leans down toward her, nose in her hair, mouth close to her ear. “There’s nothing for you to hurt.”

She leans up and kisses the spot where he had been shot through his shirt. Where a patch had been resealed to his shoulder. She lays her hand there.

“But are you okay?” she asks quietly. “I can’t imagine...”

He moves so his arms frame her face in his hands, protecting her from the fading day. Her cheeks are that beautiful orange-pink beneath her constellation of freckles, her lips thick and shining, slightly open. Her hair is everywhere, everywhere. He could never have preconstructed any sight lovelier than this.

He stores it to memory, over and over again. Writing, rewriting…

“I will be,” he says. “Soon the memory will be put into the context of this moment.”

She watches him doubtfully. “But I know how your memory works,” she says. “You can’t just buffer things away.”

“Is it not much the same for you?” he asks. “Where you let the bad that you recall outweigh the good of a single moment?”

Her gaze darkens at that and he feels pressed to kiss the corner of her eye to bring the light back -- and yet he does not want to release her from his stare just yet. “...yeah,” she mutters.

“I’m okay,” he says, and it is mostly the truth. “I’ll be okay. Because I know that you are with me.”

She wraps her arms around his neck, watching him quizzically.

“I don't want you to ever do anything you don't…” She swallows, resetting. “Do you...is this even...like, do you like this? Is it boring?”

He laughs; he can’t help it. Does she not understand? How deeply entrenched in his systems she is?

“It’s not boring. I do have _sensors_ ,” he says, smiling, teasing. “I do not have the same...drives as humans do, maybe. But that’s not…” He begins tracing the freckles with his finger. “That’s not what this is about.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, really? What’s it about?”

He traces his finger to the corner of her lips. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Pretend I’m a complete idiot.”

He smiles. “That I love you.” His smile falters at the strength of the feeling behind it.

She’s grinning that bright grin of hers now, the light he follows through the storm. “Oh, thank god,” she says. “I _was_ going to feel really stupid.”

* * *

She lies next to him sleepily as the evening catches up to this perfect moment in time. Her skin is warm and her lips feel swollen and she could never get enough, ever, of being right here, lying against Connor, despite all the terribleness going on around them.

But she can feel the anxiety climb up her throat, slowly, slowly, looking for an advantage, even as his warm arms hold her tightly to him. Even as one hand slowly brushes her hair out of her face. Even as something she’d only dreamed of continues to _happen_ , like she was _allowed_.

“Why don’t you get your sleep clothes on?” he says quietly to her, as if reading her thoughts. He begins to sit up, taking her with him, holding her against his shoulder. The anxiety spikes hard as the cool air in the bedroom reaches her skin. He presses his lips to her temple and her breathing stutters.

He’s too beautiful. _To_ her. Specifically.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. His breath brushes her cheek.

“Nothing,” she says, and it is a half-truth. Nothing, objectively, was wrong in this moment. “I’m...I’ll go change.” She turns to him, leaning her forehead on his cheek a moment. “Will you...be here?”

“Where would I go?” he asks seriously.

“I don’t know,” she admits, and she gets up before he can press her further on thoughts that are spilled everywhere, dropped out of a picnic basket in her head.

_You let the bad that you recall outweigh the good of a single moment._

Did he have any idea how true that was?

He nearly bled to death from multiple stab wounds and a couple gunshots, and he’s asking _her_ if something’s wrong?

She won’t get used to someone giving a shit like that. She never could. And she’s not going to let go of the fact that he had been stabbed, that he was a complete idiot about finding danger, that he would throw himself in the fire for her, that this could all be taken away from her in an instant, just like--

Suddenly she’s breathing heavily in front of the sink in the adjacent bathroom, bracing her hands on the cool ceramic and trying not to cry again. Eventually she takes off her heavy jeans, her raglan shirt, and pulls on sleep shorts and a tank top, vision blurring. She wraps her hair up in an old t-shirt. Half ashamed, half out of her mind with worry about things that won’t happen tonight, she stumbles back into the bedroom.

He sees her face and he’s crossing the room to her in an instant.

“Listen,” she says, voice shaking. “You have to swear. You can’t throw your life away or do something that will hurt you because of me, I fucking mean that. I will _break up_ with you over it,” she says, tasting the words _break up_ like a sour dust. “I’m not kidding. I’m not more important than your life or your happiness or _whatever_.”

He cups her face for a moment, looking down into her eyes.

And then he wordlessly pulls her toward the bed by her waist, moving the sheets aside so that she can lie down. He pulls her down beside him, his back to the wall. Their noses nearly touch in closeness. His arm rests over her waist.

He’s silent for a long moment, but she can see in the way he shifts his eyes about that he’s thinking.

“I’m not going to let what happened yesterday happen again,” he says softly. “I...made a miscalculation.”

She pats his chest, still anxious but not so chokingly so. “That’s one way of putting it.”

His mouth flickers with uncertainty. She knows because she is very, very close to it now. “I’ve recalibrated since then.”

She laughs despite herself. “Wow. Hot. Is that what you call it?”

He settles on a smile finally. He pulls her closer. “I mean it. I refuse to put you through such fear again. I...underestimated...the value of my life in the equation of what we are.”

_Of what we are._

She is filled with golden light.

“Yeah. You did.” She swallows the bubble that forms in her throat.

“But do you understand what you mean to me?” he asks, voice serious. “I don't want to _break up_ with you at all” -- a slight, teasing smile -- “but you need to avoid stomping right into a dangerous police situation on a whim, for example. For me, if no one else.”

He lays his chin on top of her head.

“Without you, I’m not sure I would like my new life so much,” he says.

 _Love is dumb as hell_ , Emma thinks. _All it does is make me want to cry every five minutes._

“Okay,” she says instead of crying. “So is it a deal? We both try really hard to live so the other doesn’t wanna throw themselves off a cliff?”

She means it partly as a joke, but he doesn’t laugh -- and frankly, she’s not joking that much. He’s silent for a long moment before he speaks again.

“It was your voice that pushed me through it,” he says quietly. She can feel his voice through his chest, even if it is just from a complex vocoder box. “Because I did promise you to be safe. You, telling me not to give up…” He sighs, which she always finds charming because he doesn’t need to do it. It means he’s feeling something, deep down in his heart. “You’ve given me so much. How could I dare to let you down?”

She curls into him in the bed, laying her head next to where his heart would be, listening to all the mechanics within whir gently. He’s got it backwards. She doesn’t deserve him at all, but she’s weak in the face of him. Weak before his love, freely given. “You’ll be here?” she asks, voice finally breaking. Pride, finally setting her free. “In the morning?”

“Emma,” he whispers into her hair, pressing and concerned. “Where do you keep thinking I’m going to go?”

“Away.” A throttling moment of weakness.

“Seeing as I nearly got myself killed trying to prevent that outcome…” He presses his lips to the top of her head. “That would be very stupid.”

She laughs against his chest, which makes him laugh, and eventually she falls asleep like that, curled in against him, safe.

* * *

It is like breaking down the wall of programming all over again -- making real what he had known in his heart from the beginning.

Her pajama shorts are hiked up. His hand lays on her hip like it was molded to fit her bones. Her hand is on his chest, fingers spread, and her head is tucked into the space between his collarbone and his neck, breath slow against his skin in sleep.

His other arm snakes around her bare lower back, anchoring her against him. She twitches in her sleep and he pulls her tight until he feels her muscles uncoil.

“Shh,” he whispers into her hair, words quiet as breathing. “I’m here.”

She sighs so softly he feels his system reboot and reset in a single moment. His eyes burn as his thirium pump cauterizes over.

He feels completely unmade. But the leak in his heart silences for the first time since he can remember.

* * *

“Good morning, Emma.”

She leans her head up to see his bright smile, as genuine as she’d ever seen it. If he was a fae, she was goddamn doomed now (there were pretty explicit rules about not kissing them), and the worst part was that she was perfectly okay with that.

She mumbles something in return, rolling onto her back, pinning his arm under her for a moment. She rubs her face free of drool spots, blinking against the white light coming in through the icy window. Detroit is a veritable winter wonderland, now.

“Did you sleep alright?” he asks pleasantly, and she just nods, thinking of it. She’s no wordsmith on a good day, much less right when she wakes up. She tries not to blush as she sits up and he follows suit, snaking an arm around her middle like he can’t bear to be separated.

“Did you?” she asks.

He ‘hmm’s in the affirmative, placing his head on her shoulder.

“You’re very cute,” she says. “But I’m gross.”

“You are not ‘gross’. But I am not one-hundred percent convinced you are ready to be awake.” He presses his lips into her bare shoulder.

Warmth shoots through her whole body like a wave of adrenaline. “People are gonna talk if we don’t get out of bed today.”

He looks like he’s seriously weighing the variables for a few moments. She gently presses against his arm with her hands, smiling. As much as she wants to stay here, the thought of people wondering seriously gives her anxiety -- on top of the fact that she has a life to rearrange once again. “Don’t you got reports to do or something?”

“I suppose,” he mutters. She snorts out a laugh; he’s never sounded so annoyed by that fact.

He steps out of the room to prepare himself for work. After changing and brushing her teeth in the adjoining bathroom, she steps out of the room, half-expecting everyone to have noticed them both leaving the same place at some point. Connor waits for her by the door in his usual blazer and button-up.

But no one spots them. Step 1 complete.

“Things are quiet,” Connor comments, seemingly in agreement with her observations. “Everyone seems to be recovering.”

They move through the house together and then downstairs past a few faceless UN guards. But her attempts to keep things largely on the downlow are immediately dashed when she and Connor enter the kitchen, rather obviously laughing about a picture of Sumo that Connor had pulled up on his hand. His arm is around her shoulders for a ghost of a moment, relishing the closeness, clearly not caring if anyone saw.

And Markus, North and Simon are _all_ present.

“Good morning!” Markus near booms, smiling his megawatt smile as he leans against the kitchen island.

“Sleep well?” Simon asks, smiling just as brightly -- and genuinely.

Emma’s heart flops low in her ribs with mortification.

_Please don’t be weird, please don’t be weird, please don’t be weird._

“We were just leaving,” North says, cementing her as Emma’s favorite among the bunch, but even she is smiling. The android wifi chatter must be sizzling with gossip right now. She’s glaring at the very thought -- something she only realizes because Connor tightens his arm around her shoulder.

“Slept fine,” Emma says, many moments too late. “Thankyou.” It all pours out as one word.

“There’s some left over eggs and bacon on the stove and some coffee in the pot,” Markus says.

“It was for the officers,” Simon says in explanation. “They had to pull long shifts last night. Hank asked after you.” A meaningful eyebrow raise at Connor. “I told him you were in rest mode.”

Her face is _burning_.

“Enjoy,” Markus says, a little too sincerely.

Emma tries to offer up a smile as they all begin to file out, herded by North. She gives Emma a nod as she passes, though she doesn’t miss the meaningful look shot Connor’s way either.

_It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine._

She piles a plate with food and sits at the kitchen island, trying not to think about how everyone else can flutter in and out but that she won’t be going anywhere else today.

Connor brings over two black coffees.

He sits right next to her. Their arms touch.

It _is_ fine.

He observes her for a few moments as she begins to shovel down food -- a familiar tradition. She is more hungry than she expects. “May I ask a few perhaps stupid questions?”

“Please do,” she says around a mouthful of bacon. “I’m tired of embarrassing myself.”

“First...why _are_ you embarrassed?” His voice is straightforward, but his forehead creases in thought. She can see his hands tighten around his mug. “I’ve noticed you’ve been slightly on edge since you’ve woken up and it got worse when we saw Markus and the others. Do you not want people to know about us?”

“What? No! It’s not that,” she says quickly, looking to him in concern. “I’m--”

She taps the plate a few times with her fork, sorting through the thoughts. “...I’m not...I haven’t…” She sighs, cursing her fucking brain. “I’m bad at letting people see the...inside me. You know. And you walking around, it feels like a part of my heart is suddenly _right there_ where everyone can see it.”

God, talking about this...what would people think? Would they think she was a freak? Someone who was taking advantage of him?

Explaining this to her aunt and uncle was gonna be a...thing.

“I understand your metaphor,” he says. “You are much more fragile than me and...I have not enjoyed our separations for some time.” He tilts his head, watching her. “You fear the...vulnerability as well?”

She looks at her plate. “Something like that.” She pokes an egg around with the fork. “It’s inside business. You know? It hurts bad enough dealing with shit on your own. I don’t need everyone else to be looking...and judging…”

He lays a gentle hand on her wrist. “The thoughts of others have no impact on your value to me, and I know that it's the same for you, underneath all that frowning.” A smile. 

His faith in her makes her insides itch. She can practically hear Ryker saying it. _Stop being such a little burr._ “You’re my Con,” she says quietly. He squeezes her wrist, thumb against the back of her hand. “What’s your other question?”

“Will this...” He gestures between them. “...relationship move at a proper speed for you?”

She squints at him, setting her fork down with a clank. “What does that mean?”

He purses his lips together a moment. “I have...seen enough ‘rom coms’ to know that often the next step in this sort of thing is something that I am not...equipped...for. I can’t even eat a proper meal with you, much less...”

His eyes dance askance in implication and her whole insides _flip_ in place. She leans wholly against him, earlier discomfort forgotten. "I don't want that from you, darlin’. I mean. Not if you aren’t ready or interested in that. I just want..." Her eyes can't settle. "I just want to be with you. Whatever that means."

He looks at her...

“Call me that again,” he says.

She blinks, feeling her face flush. She hadn’t even thought! He struggled so much with Con...

“Darling?”

He sits there with a dumb smile on his face for a good five seconds, looking at the table.

Fuck. She was _so_ doomed.

* * *

[10:32 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: ryker im alive

[10:32 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: im sorry. Really. I know...i’m like the worst friend of all time.

[10:32 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: but everything is both awful and the best at the same time all at once and its crazy, life is crazy, what are emotions and also im dying.

[10:32 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: im...a little confused actually!

[10:33 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: i hope you’re okay. I hope everyone’s okay.

[10:33 a.m.] RYKER.WR600: Where are you? You don't exactly sound the most sane right now.

[10:34 a.m.] RYKER.WR600: Too late. I’m already calling a cab. Tell me or you’re paying.

[10:34 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: Ryker!!!! The snow!? That wasn’t a request to come over!!

[10:36 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: oh my god, frick you, i just got the taxi notification. Sending location

[10:36 a.m.] lil.lion.lady74: insane, blondie. Insane. Guess i better tell north

[10:37 a.m.] RYKER.WR600: Nice try. But you can’t stop me now.

* * *

Connor catches Hank out at the Chicken Feed. Even with the snow shining blinding white on the streets, the place is still open (having only re-opened to business recently) and Hank still makes the trek.

It is a charming bit of normalcy in a series of very un-normal days.

Hank waves to him as he steps out of the taxi.

“You’re not on duty today, I goddamn asked,” Hank says as he approaches. “And before _you_ ask, no, there’s been no sign of him anywhere yet.”

“I _am_ functional, Hank. I already checked the reports.” Connor smiles.

Hank just shakes his head. He does not say _fucking androids_ but the thought seems implied nonetheless -- even if Connor catches the way relief eases some of the man’s wrinkles.

“No hospitals...nothing,” Hank says in disbelief. “I kind of hope we find him dead on the street.”

“It is deeply unlikely that we will be that lucky.” Connor looks at the small metal table. “Call it a hunch.”

Hank observes him over his hamburger.

“You ever think of quitting this gig, Con? Nice boy like you.”

Connor raises an eyebrow. “What would you do without me?”

“You have evolved into a bit of a snarky asshole, but I don’t think that’s entirely your fault.” A flicker of a smirk. “I mean...I dunno. I guess I’m still...” Hank looks down at his meal and sighs deeply. “I hated seeing you like that.”

Connor looks at the table. “Don’t worry. I’ve learned my lesson.”

Hank nods slowly, taking him in with a long, analyzing stare. “Your girl talking to you again yet?”

Connor narrows his eyes at the moniker. “We...yes…I suppose she is ‘my girl.’ Though I still don’t like that term.”

Hank puts his burger down. Connor watches realization dawn on Hank’s face. “Holy shit.”

Connor raises both eyebrows this time.

“Goddamnit,” Hank cusses, but he’s smiling. “You couldn’t have waited to get mortally wounded for another month? Now I owe Chris $20.”

Connor tilts his head. “...you what, Lieutenant?”

“We had a bet going--you know what, nevermind, you’re not gonna like it.”

“You told me to tell her the truth!”

“When do you ever actually listen to me?” Hank says. But he’s laughing. Connor realizes: He might even be proud.

* * *

Hank settles into his car with a huff before he turns fully to Connor in the passenger’s seat. Bald-faced concern flashed in the man’s eyes. “You’re really doing alright? Most officers I know need a couple days after nearly getting killed on the job.”

“What is it you once said? It is a process?”

“I mighta said that.”

“It is a process. And working is mine.”

Hank nods, looking at the road, starting up the car. “It’ll be nice to have you around the house for a few minutes, anyway. Sumo misses you like crazy.”

Connor stares out the windshield. That was Hank for ‘I also miss you, dumbass.’

They drive down the road in companionable silence.

“There is one detail I can’t shake,” Connor says.

“The picture.”

Of course Hank knows. “Yes. It was in a file that did not even match her name.”

“Yeah. That messed me up, too.”

“And the way he acted like...he knows her.”

“I read your report.” A pause. “Did you ask her about it?”

Connor looks down. “I don’t think she remembers what it is that he wants. I did not want to burden her with that.”

“I hate to say it,” Hank says, sighing, “but you might have to. Maybe her family. She’s got an aunt and uncle out here, doesn’t she?”

“She does. They have been purposefully kept out of the loop. For their sake...and for Emma’s.”

Hank looks at him. “I know, Con. But we’re kind of past the point of niceties, here.” A flicker of some strange amusement. “Knowing you, she’s kind of my girl now, too.”

* * *

Emma stares at her friend, rolling into the house in their wheelchair completely bundled up and shining with melting snow. A dark blue scarf conceals their pale hair and face so that only their light blue eyes peek out. Their hands are thickly gloved and multiple blankets are wrapped around their lap and remaining leg. She wants to be mad about it. North stands by, arms crossed, face stony.

“Hey,” Ryker says, muffled by the scarf, clearly shaking from the cold.

And then she remembers androids don’t feel the cold. And taxis were no longer allowed to casually move up and down this street, meaning they probably had to roll all the way down the street...

“Fuck you,” she says weakly before pulling them into a tight, tight hug. “You idiot. You hate the snow so much, I wouldn’t ask this of you.”

“You haven’t called in weeks. I know you weren’t really allowed to, but _still_.”

Emma pulls back. Ryker begins peeling off the many layers of scarf and it strikes her -- they look near tears. Perhaps from the windburn, but perhaps...

“You didn’t have to _come out to the Speaker’s House_.”

“Nope, I had to,” they say, seemingly trying to talk over the scary reminder that this is the house of the Speaker for the Androids. “You look exhausted,” they press instead. “What’s going on?”

“A lot, Blondie! And now you’re in the middle of it.” She sighs, absentmindedly rearranging the blankets on their lap. “Come on. Let’s get you a warm mug.”

North stands by, watching unreadably as Emma directs Ryker toward the kitchen. They wheel off with shaking fingers.

“Sorry,” Emma whispers. “I didn’t think they--”

“It’s fine,” North says, casting her gaze away. “Just don’t make a habit of it.” A pause. “Who are they?”

Emma looks after them into the kitchen. “Another stupid idiot that let me into their life,” she mutters.

And that’s how she ends up on a couch, hands wrapped around a hot cocoa mug as she gets completely owned by her best friend.

Ryker brings the cocoa mug up to their nose, inspecting it as if they wish they could take a sip of it.  “So you finally admitted it,” they say, a weary sort of relief in their voice.

Emma squints. “Just say what you wanna say.”

Ryker makes a snorty-laugh sound. “Like I haven’t from the beginning!” They shake their head. “You’ve been dancing around him like an idiot for months. A well meaning idiot, but still.” Emma can’t help but smirk a little at this call-out, and Ryker continues unabashed. “You asked him to dinner, multiple times, and he said yes, multiple times. Even though he’s an android and can’t, you know, _eat._ And then you both show up at my house…” They pause for a moment, considering. “Don’t get me wrong, he was still very much the ex-hunter, current cop-slash-bodyguard of rumor. But sometimes, when he looked at you … I mean, even Chase could see it, and you know that he’s not necessarily the most observant.”

Emma sips her drink, looking away at this mention of Ryker’s roommate/another friend. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

Ryker leans forward. “I _did_. Multiple times.”

“Yeah.” Emma sets her mug down and stares out one of the beautiful windows of the Manfred Mansion. “Sounds about right.”

She watches the snow lightly fall from the trees in the garden and thinks about what it means to feel rooted somewhere. What it means to stay. What it means to belong.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ryker asks, for maybe the fifth time.

She closes her eyes against the brightness of the light. “There’s just...there’s been a lot. All at once. These past weeks, I’ve felt so stupidly alone but...I’m just...awful at remembering how to not be that way.”

She looks to her friend, one of the few in her life, one of the few she could damn count on even though she probably didn’t deserve them, either. She barged into their life (like she did many of the androids in this city). She thought they’d been attacked and that she’d have to call the police on whoever tore their leg off but it was an older wound from a different time, even in March.

She offered to walk them home because she felt adrift and Ryker offered to help with a few jobs by providing company and minor support. And maybe they did it all out of fear at first, fear of this blustering human who stomped down streets in big boots. Maybe they didn’t understand at the time. But now…

They watch her intently, in that clear-eyed way only androids can, and she knows they can see parts of her that even she tries not to look at.

And that’s when it hits her: She’s not leaving Detroit anytime soon.

“You know I love you, right?” she asks, voice quiet. She has to be honest. There’s no more room for hiding things. “Even though I’m an idiot who never calls and who yells all the time...you know…”

They reach out and touch Emma’s hand. “Yeah, I do,” they say, voice even and measured. “And you know that I love you and that I would really prefer it if you kept me in the loop on what’s going on in your life. Beyond but also including world-ending events like your boyfriend almost dying. I want to help, Emma. But you have to talk to me. Or if not me, then someone, anyone. Stop trying to do it by yourself.”

Emma has to lean back a little bit, looking away.

“Okay, alright. Yeah. The universe is yelling at _full force_.”

“We met in the spring,” Ryker says, straightforward and true as the steel of a trowel. “You came to Detroit in the spring. You know, hope, rebirth, renewal, all that great stuff?” A slight smile, off center but honest. “It’s been yelling at you since the beginning.”

* * *

[9:36 p.m.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: Where are you?

[9:37 p.m.] lil.lion.lady74: I Have Run Away, Goodbye Fool

[9:37 p.m.] lil.lion.lady74: im in the library, get over here

 

In the next instant, she hears the door chime: _Welcome, Connor Anderson._

It takes quite literally all of her willpower but she does not leave to greet him at the door. She stands up and brushes her old flannel down, but she has standards. She is gonna hold herself to them and not run to greet him like a puppy.

“Did you know,” she says, as soon as Connor enters the room, smiling with a tenderness that almost embarasses her, “that we are apparently the last people to know we’re a thing?”

“Apparently so” he says, brushing her hair away and placing his hands along her shoulders and neck as soon as he reaches her. His voice softens. “I’m glad to see you.”

“It was only one day.” But she grins, leaning lightly into one of his hands. “I spent most of mine getting my ass handed back to me by Ryker.”

He tilts his head, watching her face in that open way he did, though his chin twitches. “I went through something similar with Hank. Sumo says hello.”

He frowns ever so slightly. Unusual following comments regarding Sumo. She knocks her knuckles lightly against his chest. “You okay?”

His eyes dart away. He stands straight and crosses his arms in thought. They stand close enough that his forearms brush her middle.

“Do you aunt or uncle know much about your youth?” he asks, eyes shifting back to her face.

She blinks. “Nothing I don’t know, probably. We didn’t visit a whole bunch when I was young. Why?”

But she knows why. There’s only ever one thing on his mind these days.

She steps back to give him some space to work through whatever it is he needs to work through before he can really let go of this tonight.

“Abel had a picture of you,” he says before she can get back to the sofa. “As a young girl. No older than six, as if from an old file or passport. Very simple.”

She blanches. That old feeling. Like something’s _catching up_.

“You looked sad,” he says.

She turns back to look at him. His brow furrows in that old, concerned way.

“He...probably just had something from my foster care program,” she says in comfort. To him and herself. “You said he was really good at hacking, right?”

Connor looks at the floor.

“We haven’t really talked about what happened,” she says, fully turning toward him, watching him carefully. “Did you want to?”

He’s really struggling to work through this, she realizes. It’s taking him much longer than usual to form responses.

“He said...strange things.” He starts toward her at this, though his eyes don’t quite reach her face. “He acted like he knows everything about you. But he doesn’t.”

He reaches for her arms, laying his hands gently on her wrists.

“ _I_ know you,” he says.

She scans his expression -- the way his jaw tightens, even as his eyes turn soft and dark. She reaches a thumb up to touch the single line of wrinkles forming just above the bridge of his nose.

“Fuck that guy,” she says quietly. She presses and smooths the lines of tension away. “I’ve literally never seen him before in my life. Before now. He doesn’t know shit about me. You…” She pokes him on the nose. “...know more than you should.”

She smiles at him and finally tension begins to seep out of his body. He leans forward and kisses her forehead, then her nose, and then her mouth. He pulls her in by her hands, lacing his fingers through hers, stifling a growly sigh. Her whole body near spasms at his welcome warmth returning to her once again. But she pulls back with a laugh, not quite ready to shamelessly make out in Markus’ library, even if the idea doesn’t sound so bad...

“That _is_ my job,” he says against her lips. He squeezes her fingers.

“And now you are off work.” Her voice is remarkably stable all things considered. “Grab a book or something. Let’s relax.”

“Actually…” He looks off as if remembering something. “Please sit, if you don’t mind. I’ll be right back.”

So she flops down on the sofa to wait a few moments before he returns bearing one of Hank’s old books. Ender’s Game.

“Oh, you read my mind,” she says, laughing a little, though she feels a strange pang of sadness. That they had the same idea is charming -- but that it likely spawned from his distress is not. She pats the sofa next to her.

He sits, but not without a light tug on her right arm. “Come closer,” he whispers.

She grins through the thrill that warps through her. He sits with his back on the far arm and pulls her in between his legs so her back is against his chest and his head can lay on her shoulder. His arms wrap around her middle.

“I like when you're close to me like this,” he says. “I feel...grounded.”

“ _Grounded_ ,” she ponders, settling against him. He kisses her temple. “Yeah. Me, too.”

It’s wild to think that this is how her vagabond days end: sitting with a being who was barely a thought in someone’s head little over a year ago, reading a book that was older than them both combined, in a house that’s seen more change in its strange life than she could even imagine.  
  
But she starts to read, exactly like that, holding herself against him so he doesn’t feel like he’s flying off the face of the earth -- and so that she could remember what roots feel like after so many dry years.

They were nearing the final third when they last left off. A young boy, suffering in isolation, playing ruthless games set to test his mettle, called to push his friends and himself to their breaking points for what seems to be no reason. He wants nothing more than to break free and he decides he will sacrifice everything to make that happen. He aims his missile at the planet of his enemy, and he fires, hoping the people testing him will find him too crazy to continue.

But then, it turns out, the game is real -- and the young boy has done exactly what everyone wanted. Their enemy is dead. Destroyed in a single, fell swoop.

Connor tenses up around her when she finishes that chapter. “We have to finish it now,” he says.

He has to know…

And so they read, about freedom and what it means, in the house of the Speaker of the Androids. She doesn’t realize she’s whispering until her voice chokes up around the words said by Ender’s sister, the beloved Valentine, as they seek to leave Earth forever.

 

 

> _"Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people -- by people who love you."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> our idiots finally made it!!!!  
> thanks everyone for sticking with them thru these hard times. I've been looking forward to this chapter for so long and I hope it didn't disappoint, heh
> 
> Also, I guess a minor note: I likely will not be writing smut for THIS piece, partly because I think I'll be terrible at it and partly because I'd want to dedicate like, a good chunk of time to getting that moment right. So, apologies in advance if that's something you are looking for (though there will be a lot of fluff because I am That Way). But...seeing as this world has caught me by the throat, it's highly likely there will be more stories within it! So...keep your eyes peeled!
> 
> Also a scheduling note: I will be going on vacation from Sept. 1- Sept. 9. I'mma try to update before then, but no promises sadly. I swear I haven't forgotten <3
> 
> Thanks again everybody!!


	11. far beneath the waves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gets a little suggestive at the end but nothing explicit at all because I can barely write the word 'naked' without blushing.
> 
> another 9000 word pre-vacation bomb before I throw you all back into the full force of the plot :)

“Walk with me.”

Connor looks up from the files in his hands as Markus leans on the old wood door frame of the old Manfred study (now, mostly storage). He closes his Mind Palace with a few long blinks. The images of Abel dissolve into translucent, square frames. The lists of potential power fluctuations, the hospital reports and CCTV records all fade. Small ERRORs sprout red in the corner of his eye.

Perhaps he could use a break.

Silently, Connor rises from the creaky desk chair straight from the 1990s and pokes his way out of the jungle of old canvases, paperback books and bizarre animal sculptures, following Markus outside into the snow-covered gardens. The quiet is nearly absolute, even as mid-afternoon sun bathes everything in blinding white cold.

Markus stares at nothing as they walk. He is unbothered in a long coat reminiscent of the one he wore during the demonstrations -- except better tailored and made of wool.

“It feels like it’s been weeks but its only been a few days,” Markus says, brushing a hand over a snow-laden hedge. “We’re doing everything we can about the Cho situation but the press is...turning on us.”

Focus. 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Snow crystallizations still melt on his hands. Biocomponents will be able to withstand this temperature for 369 more hours. ERROR.

“Simon is doing well,” Connor comments. The PL600’s latest round of press wrangling included various comments on the efforts of the DVC and public revelations about the HAIT devices in action as well as strong statements about New Jericho being against violence of all forms, even that perpetrated by androids.

“Doesn’t stop investor leakage, unfortunately,” Markus says. Indeed, they had lost three on the board “until our own investigations are complete” -- business speak for “we’re out until the going is good.” Cyberlife still remained as their heavy-hitter, but likely only because they had to be under the current treaty. “We have to go after Abel directly.”

Markus turns his dichromatic gaze upon Connor and he feels the temperature decrease, though he knows that is nonsensical.

“My memories,” Connor says. The androids on gurneys. The interfacing with the WR600. _So you found me out._

“That, combined with our data on his illegal patent tampering, could bring some light in.”

Connor stares at a cherubic fountain. Its eyes and hair are covered in ice. “...normally I wouldn’t want to publicize an in-progress investigation, but we could perhaps snuff him out this way. If he’s alive.” He and Markus share a look. Such a gambit could backfire if people don’t feel inclined to believe them. They are all, after all, still living in a world that is not built for them. “But it’s easy to dismiss memory footage as altered and what I have is...fraught.”

“Either way,” Markus says with a sigh. “We need to tell the truth...we’re clearly not gaining anything by holding our cards close to the chest.” Markus raises an eyebrow at Connor, slowing his steps.

All predictions ring out clearly: here comes the comment Connor was waiting for.

“Speaking of telling the truth…”

“You’ve managed to keep your questions to yourself for an impressively long time, Speaker. A total of three days.”

Markus laughs softly. “Well, you two are interesting.”

“I suppose,” Connor says, not quite sure what else to say to that.

Markus finally slows to a stop. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and leans forward slightly onto his toes. He comes by these charming human gestures naturally, Connor notes. “People are gonna talk.”

“About?”

Markus tilts his head slightly. “Connor.” It feels like a slight reprimand. “About what it means. About free will and your involvement and what she means to you and whether its real. You know that.” He takes a careful step forward. “It is real, right?”

A pinging in his head like an error, but not an error. Connor realizes he feels vaguely affronted. “As real as anything else I am experiencing day to day.” He turns fully toward Markus, shoes sliding in the snow. “I don’t want to make it an issue with the press.”

“And it won’t be if I can help it.” Suddenly the man grabs Connor by the shoulder, shaking him slightly. Smiling. “It’s good for you. You’ve lightened up. Like, a really small amount, but still.”

Connor smiles back, and it feels real. He recalls Emma’s laugh and holds it in his mind for a few moments, considering.

[CALL INCOMING: EMMA IBORI]

He blinks. Did he do that, somehow?

“I have to take this,” he says to Markus, stepping aside a moment. Markus wanders a few steps away, examining a dormant butterfly bush.

She does not usually call during the day. He is at a loss at what would precipitate this outcome.

“Hello, Emma,” is what he settles on as a greeting, rather than ‘are you alright?’.

“Hey darlin’, guess what.”

He feels bright as the blue sky inside. He reconfirms the definition of darling.

[dar·ling  
noun  
1.  
used as an affectionate form of address to a beloved person.]

She moves on without giving him time to offer a guess. “I’m approved for a test with the HAIT. My days being deadweight are maybe possibly close to over. Maybe.” Her voice is dry.

“You are not deadweight,” he says, smiling and serious.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, amusement coloring her tone. “Well, I just wanted you to know. What I’d be up to or whatever.”

He considers the fairly big personal step that this is for Emma. She does not particularly enjoy being beholden to anyone, even so far as telling someone where she will be at any given moment.

“Who will you be performing the test upon?”

“Dunno yet,” she sighs into the phone. “I’m not sure if I get to choose or what.”

Something clicks inside. He compiles various computations on the question in a matter of milliseconds. A jagged globule of anxiety drips between his lungs before it all clicks again, and he sorts through a series of thoughts about Emma _trying_ and digging deep into this place she didn’t like to show others and how she kissed him quickly on the shoulder through his shirt just this morning when she thought no one was looking.

“What about me?” he suddenly asks.

He did not know what she could find.

A long pause on her end. “You…? Connor...”

“Why not?” he says, voice expertly hiding his growing discontent.

“Are you sure?

“This way I can be there if anything happens,” he says.

His programming warns him of a [LIE].

He wants her to find _something_. But what that is, he is not sure.

* * *

When Connor steps into the office of Emma’s counselor, the woman [NATALIE KL900] stares at him with open shock. Connor extends a hand, unsure what to make of it.

“My name is Connor Anderson--”

“I know who you are,” Natalie says softly, taking his hand and gently shaking it once. He finally categorizes the look in her eye: admiration. “You freed me from the Cyberlife tower. You were with Markus the night he...well.”

Her skin glitches for a moment and a blush lights up her cheeks as she steps back toward her desk. She turns back around, placid and professional expression restored.

Connor smiles to hide his processing. Sometimes he forgets he is part of the mythos surrounding Markus, and he is glad for that. It’s something he tries to forget rather purposefully.

Emma raises an eyebrow at him, dark eyes dancing all over his face. He tilts his head at her in turn.

_She has no idea..._

“Anyway, he’s here for the test,” she says, glancing back to Natalie.

Natalie’s mouth pops open for a moment.

“Emma,” Natalie says softly, taking a worried step toward her, “I’m not sure Connor will be the best test case…” Natalie turns her large, hazel eyes on Connor instead. “Would you feel...comfortable running the interface with someone inexperienced?”

“She is not exactly inexperienced,” Connor says with a small smirk. Emma crosses her arms and looks at nothing. “And I don’t want to perform the interface with anyone else.”

“I know him,” Emma says. A cold ping thrums through his middle. “It’s just a test run, right?”

Natalie glances between them. Her discomfort is clear in the way she purses her lips together -- and yet her eyes linger strangely on Connor. He remembers Emma’s words.

_You’re like the...holy grail of the HAIT program. You and Markus. But Markus is...well, you know._

Natalie seems unwilling to let this chance go.

“Alright,” Natalie says, picking something up from her desk and placing it in Emma’s palm. The dime-sized interfacer, similar in dimension to an LED. “It’s just a simple hardware test. No deep examinations. Okay?”

Emma puts it on her head with unfortunate expertise and nods.

“Connor, your systems may take some time to adjust to the interface. Don’t make any sudden moves. Just breathe and trust Emma,” Natalie explains.

Emma gestures Connor to a chair across from her in front of Natalie’s desk and then reaches out with her hand, smiling. He can nearly hear her saying it aloud via that smile alone: _Ready to die of embarrassment?_

He sits. In the only time in his memory since their feelings were made known, he hesitates for a quarter millisecond. He meets her eye. She stares back, resolute.

He trusts _her_. She’s not the problem.

He takes her hand. She takes in a sharp breath.

[(*(## …. HUMAN-ANDROID INTERFACE TECHNOLOGY. NEURAL HANDSHAKE DETECTED.]

[ACCEPT?]

He blinks. He lets her in.

He feels a tugging in his middle, like he is suddenly falling from a great height, limbs twisting over one another. He takes another breath and he can finally steady himself. His feet touch something like the ground in an echoing _click_.

He turns and sees Emma watching him.

Her image flickers in and out, fuzzy against the blackness of the space wherein they are meeting. She lifts her hand in greeting.

[WARNING: ERROR DETECTED]

[UNSTABLE IMAGE. HEIGHTENED BODILY FUNCTIONS DETECTED. EMMA IBORI: STRESS LEVELS RISING.]

[EMMA...IN DANGER?]

He lurches toward her. Her image stumbles backward.

_Wait! Slow down._

If she’s in danger, this needs to stop now, he has to find the source--

He reaches for her hand. His hand passes through--

A child Emma, watching in the middle distance, not far in age from the child in the photo in Abel’s files, but she’s smiling. Shara holds her up in her arms, grinning with unusual abandon, kissing her cheek. _What do you think of your new home, Emma?_ He feels a mother’s touch like a distant thing, a whisper of program not yet accessed and yet…

He reaches toward her and Emma’s hand moves, instead. He realizes suddenly: He’s looking in the mirror. He is that small child, wide-eyed and wondering, safe and bright and warm, hair growing out like curly flaps over her ears, eyes deep with curious light.

He hears another Emma, an Emma from decades in the future... _Connor, focus!_

He has a hammer in hand, feeling the winds of a high place on his back, through his hair. No one asked him to do this, but he’s here because he saw a hole in their roof and leaks in their kitchen. He’ll figure out the money situation later.

He’s in a bar, alone except for a large man imposing next to him in a bar seat. He whips out a fist. He feels it crunch against the man’s face...

_Come back!_

He whirls back around toward the darkness, and he wishes he never had.

The dark blue-sea craters in Daniel’s face. An AX400’s scared but determined eyes from behind a chain-link fence. The rain streaks down the face of the blue-haired Traci. His thirium pump regulator scattered across the dark kitchen floor, hands reaching, crawling...

He falls into a chasm between the Urban Farms of Detroit, bounces off trains, calculates velocities and distance and the exact percentage at which he can risk Hank’s life…

_Connor?_

Anything for the mission, the multitude of mental gymnastics required to ensure he treats Hank with respect but _only for the mission_ , the metallic clicking of Amanda’s shoes on white metal, the mission will be easier if you act like you care, of course, it’s simple as that, it’s easier to pretend, to run diagnostics over processors that refuse to ignore death, to remember who you are: nothing but a machine, completing a task, _of course_ \--

_Emma, stay back!_

The zero-care in which Daniel was destroyed, the zero-care in which he held his own life or the life of anyone, and it does not compute, he cannot be that person anymore. Emma is getting in the way of the mission, Emma is blocking his mission to Cyberlife--

**You are disgusting, you are just following programming, nothing you feel is real--**

_I had gotten through this, I’d worked through so much of this--_

Emma, screaming.

Emma is interfering. Unfortunately, we fear she must be disposed of.

_NO. YOU WILL NOT HURT HER._

He yanks his head back, away from the growing smell of ozone and burning. Whatever part of his programming that is outside the HAIT bundles all his strength into a single kicking motion away from Emma.

[DISRUPTION TO NEURAL HANDSHAKE. PROGRAMMING READJUSTING…]

His vision buffers. Sound suddenly returns in a oceanic wave. Natalie, yelling somewhere behind him: _Security! I need a doctor!_

Blood streams down Emma’s face from her nostrils. Her whole body twitches violently.

Her eyes roll back in her head.

She falls...

* * *

The creak of a swing. But she’s loosened her grip too much from the last push. She’s gone too far this time, and now she’s falling backwards--

Soft hands touch her back. She hears her fathers soft scolding.

_You have to be more careful, Emma._

_I almost didn’t catch you._

* * *

Emma gasps as she slumps to her knees, vision returning in a tunneling, black blur. Something hot and sticky cakes under her running nose. She reaches out a steadying arm against the plush chair behind her, feeling the repulsing, hot thrum of a migraine erupting to life behind her eyes.

Her knees throb. How did she get on the floor?

Another moment passes and the memories come flooding back.

She looks in desperation for Connor’s thirium regulator, but she realizes moments too slowly that it hadn’t been real, that he is sitting across from her, not breathing or blinking. His shirt is still bleach white and perfectly buttoned. He stares at nothing, eyes shining. His jaw is clenched so tight she wonders if he’ll break it.

She scoots on her knees toward him, reaching toward his arms. As soon as she grabs on, he seizes her arms in a vice so tight she nearly cries out from the shock of it, but some part of her seems to recognize that it wouldn’t help.

How did he keep all that hidden in there? Under a veneer of complete control?

But she knew.

“We’re okay,” she says, finding that hidden steel. Her voice does not shake, despite the pain curdling into sickness behind her eyes. “Nothing happened. We’re fine.”

His eyes suddenly match to hers like magnets.

“No,” he says, jaw barely moving.

She tries to rub at the stickiness under her nose but Connor’s grip doesn’t allow her to move. She nearly jumps when Natalie comes back around into her vision. Two figures hang back in the hallway, indiscernible in shadow.

“Your guards are going to take you to the hospital,” the woman says, with a considerable amount of fire. Emma opens her mouth to argue but Natalie lifts a finger up. “No. Go. This isn’t normal, Emma. I’ve never seen any human body react like that to the HAIT before.”

Panic floods her body. No. No. Absolutely not, no hospitals, Emma, that’s final. Someone else’s voice, warning her.

But she sees the fragile glass breaking behind Connor’s eyes. Sees the tears there, condensing like mist.

She tightens her grip on his arms.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll go. Okay? Connor?”

His vice loosens infinitesimally.

* * *

[ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR]

Why are human emergency rooms full of so much _waiting?_

His uncomfortably well-known status among android nurses helps somewhat -- as does the presence of the UN guards that follow Connor and Emma most places. But once they are in a room for treatment, the waiting still continues. Nothing can make the gears of a hospital move quickly, it seems, if you are not dying.

He is not 100 percent certain that Emma is not actively dying, adding to his frustration.

When asked, she could not articulate much about the experience: flashes of violent images pulling her down like an undercurrent, but she doesn’t remember pain or discomfort or how everything suddenly went off the rails. He detected no lies. She really did not know.

She lays back on the simple bed, one hand against her eyes to block out the light as she waits for her migraine medicine to kick in. The other hand is in his tight grip.

He focuses on the feel of her skin. The calluses of her hands.

No one at the DVC had any answers yet, either, and he’s trying to _forget._

“Are you okay?” she asks, yet again.

“Yes,” he softly lies, yet again.

He squeezes her hand to try and stop his shaking, but the errors in his thoughts persist and his muscles lock in place. What if something flips in him and he does try to kill her? What _if?_

Was anything he felt real? Could it all be flipped by some switch, hidden deep inside of him, and he’d wake up one day to Hank’s blood on his hands? To the light in Emma’s eyes fading because of him? Would he even know?

Priority management is completely shot. He shakes and shakes, ready to spring away from her at any moment while also completely unwilling to leave her side until he saw for himself what caused her to collapse.

He once again understands the term ‘exhausting.’

The doctor finally returns. Connor scans her face immediately.

[HUMAN. 37 YEARS OLD. CONCERN. HEIGHTENED CONFUSION.]

“Emma...when did you say you were last seen by a physician?”

“Long time ago,” she says quietly. “No insurance.”

The doctor squints. “Your digital profile has next to nothing in it except an old standing order that you are not to be subject to any scanning technology. Not even X-ray.”

Emma sits up. He can nearly see the wave of nausea hit her at the movement. “...what’s that mean?”

“I’m not sure,” the doctor admits. “I’ve never seen that order before. Ever. I’ve checked it against the blockchain...it’s old, but legit. You really know nothing about it?”

“What about other tests?” Connor intervenes. The doctor levels a look at him, sparing a glance to their intertwined hands.

“You’re her...friend, not her treatment supervisor.”

Indignation sparks within his regulator.

“No, I don’t know shit. Do what you have to do,” Emma says, waving her off, glaring. “I just want to leave.”

The doctor lists off a series of blood tests that make Emma blanch, but Connor squeezes her hand. She withers at him but acquiesces. “So long as New Jericho is paying,” she mutters at Connor.

“There is no price tag on your life,” he says quietly back. “I will pay.”

The doctor takes some notes and sweeps out of the room.

The old mistaken [LIE] detector continues to trigger. A hunch, growing into something volatile and high-strung.

“We have to call your family,” Connor says quietly.

Emma leans back on the bed and just sighs, extending a hand out for her phone.

* * *

Emma pulls the phone from her face, wincing.

“We’re getting in the car right now,” Auntie Claire declares forcefully over the phone loud enough she is sure people in the next room could hear it. “You are coming home with us, tonight. No questions.”

Auntie still likes to talk to her like she’s 16 and uncertain, rather than 26 and clear-eyed. Emma sighs. She feels static across her skin as Connor performs a light scan on her, as if by doing so he can find answers the doctors somehow ignored. She shoots him a look.

“Auntie. I just need you to answer my question.”

Connor doesn’t look particularly apologetic about it. He hasn’t for the past hour.

“I don’t know why that’s on your file,” Claire says heavily after an entirely too long pause. “Have you tried calling your old doctors?”

“The hospital tried that.” Emma braces herself. “Would Mom or Dad have had anything on it?”

“...Shara never told me anything.”

There’s an old bitterness to that statement. Claire is the older sister. Her younger sister wasn’t supposed to outshine her in every way possible, including in the drama of her death or the daughter who refused to settle quite right with the rest of the family.

“I can’t go home with you,” Emma says, voice even. “It’s complicated.”

“No, it isn’t,” Claire says. Emma sends a thousand apologies into the universe. She’s not blood related to Claire at all, and yet Emma seems to have somehow inserted her genetic makeup into a family of people all exactly as stubborn as her. “Who do I need to argue with?”

“The...uh, DPD?”

“... _Emmaline Min Ibori,_ what in God’s name is going on?”

* * *

Claire clacks her heels with scary precision into the recovery room, followed by a flustered nurse and a troubled Uncle Dayo. Her inkling to pick a fight is very suddenly flattened when her eyes land on Connor, rising to stand next to Emma’s hospital bed (which Connor has, naturally, insisted she remain within).

“You -- you’re that android on the news. One of them,” Claire says. Her dark eyes turn flinty once she recovers. “What the hell is happening?”

Connor walks up to her and extends a hand, waving off the nurse with the other. “Claire Ibori-Brown, hello. My name is Connor Anderson.”

In any other circumstance, the face her aunt makes as she suddenly puts two-and-two together would make Emma laugh. Claire takes Connor’s hand with a firmness that shakes his arm. “ _You’re_ Connor? Emma’s Corps friend?”

As it stands, Emma has very little patience left to explain -- or to deal with Claire’s entirely too-shocked tone.

“Yes, auntie, they’re the same. You’re causing a scene.”

“Seems like that’s the only way I can get you to talk to me,” Claire snaps.

Emma looks to Connor, frowning. This is the risk they calculated. She nods near imperceptibly to him.

“Why don’t you come with me out here and we can talk?” Connor smiles upon Claire. Emma is familiar with that smile -- the one that could charm even a grumpy old drunk like Hank to consider listening to myriad requests. Claire, unprepared, simply levels a stony look at Emma, turns on her red-soled heel and walks out of the room.

Emma watches after them for a moment, heart hollowing out. Only a couple hours prior, Connor had been near catatonic with panic.

Uncle Dayo finally steps closer, looking upon Emma with relief. Dayo is a chilled lemonade after dealing with the hot day that is her aunt. He’s handsome, aged well as bourbon, and soft-spoken.

“Hey, baby.” He takes up Connor’s old chair with a loud creak. Emma smiles at him, shutting out her distracting thoughts. He extends a deep sepia hand to hers, and she takes it. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Emma says quietly. “...all the tests they could do came back negative so far.” And Connor insisted on just about every one possible. Her poor arm. “The best they have is ‘the technology isn’t compatible with my brain chemistry,’ which sounds like grade A doctor-level bullshit to me.”

“Yeah, you ain’t wrong. You’ve taken meds for your migraine?”

“Mhmm.”

Dayo ‘hmms’ noncommittally and stares at the floor for a moment. But he, unlike Emma or Claire, is better at letting go. Better at redirecting his energy in useful ways.

“How’s work? I really liked what you did on the last house you were at -- Kelman Lane?”

They speak companionably (blessedly) about contracting -- as Dayo is the man who she somewhat inherited the job from -- until Claire comes storming back in.

For the speed of her entrance, her face is remarkably free of anger. Her eyes are wide with fear, instead.

“Honey?” Dayo asks, noticing his wife’s expression. Claire looks between Dayo and Emma, before taking up position at the other side of Emma’s bed.

Emma frowns. “So you know, now?”

Claire lays a hand on Emma’s shoulder. They watch each other for a heavy moment, until Emma realizes Claire isn’t looking at her; she’s looking elsewhere, as if watching memories play in a jagged loop before her eyes.

“You’re coming home with us tonight,” Claire says. “Okay? Connor says it’s alright.”

Emma looks to Connor just over Claire’s shoulder.

“And I’m coming with,” he says, answering her question before she can vocalize it.

“Yes,” Claire says, perturbed. “That’s one of the...terms.”

Emma closes her eyes at the minor relief. Despite the slew of questions she will surely face and the inescapable feeling that she’s being passed around like a hot stone, she can’t complain about the prospect of a more familiar bed in a familiar house. If only for a night.

* * *

After the doctor relents on keeping Emma around for observation, unable to find a clinical reason to insist upon it, they are dismissed to the Ibori-Brown house, nestled in one of the richer suburbs of Detroit.

Claire’s successful career as an architect could be felt in every aspect of the house’s design, from the bright open floor plan to the chic colors selected for every wall and furniture piece. When they settle on the couch, Connor wonders how often anyone sits in it.

Claire orders Chinese, giving Emma a chance to sleep off her medication on the couch in the well-heeled living room before food arrives. Connor sits to the far side of the plush sofa, carefully calculating the balance between remaining close and prompting suspicion. She sleeps with her head just inches away from his leg. He keeps his hands tapping patterns on his knees. It's maddening.

_Let her come home with me tonight. I might have something that...explains some of this. I...I’ll have to find it._

_We have to move quickly, Claire._

_A pointed finger, a hissing voice. Don’t. But softened eyes. I know you are just doing your job and that she’s your friend. But give that girl a break_ . _Please._

The irrationality of his potential responses had rankled him into silence. Many of the potential paths were steeped in anger: _She is more than just my job. Or my friend. I know what limits she has been pressed to. She doesn’t talk about you. You do not get to judge me._

But today had proven that perhaps Emma did not know the extent of the truth -- and in turn, perhaps he did not know every truth of hers, either. So he had allowed it.

He watches the family move about in front of him in a strange, banal blur.

After asking if he needed anything, Claire slipped upstairs. Dayo sat in silence in a far recliner chair, pointedly watching the television, uninterested in sparking conversation or at all addressing the UN presence just outside their home. And that was that.

Connor’s eyes rest on family photos filled with two young people Emma had never spoken of. Scans confirm they are her cousins, long moved out of the house.

The TV drones on in silence that stretches on, years and years. Hank appears in his head. _The only thing TV gets right is how messed up families can be. Not because of the drama, but because it’s the only place in the world where someone could be on fire and everyone would just shut the fuck up about it like its any other day. And for what? To keep the peace?_

At some point, he sees Markus’ familiar face cross the screen, alongside Carisa Cho’s.

_New Jericho has released new information regarding the death of Carisa Cho -- tying her death to the case of disappearances of multiple androids across the treaty zone._

_“The case is ongoing.” Simon, at a press conference. “However, after an investigation lead by a member of the DPD, we have reason to suspect that Carisa Cho’s death may have been arranged by one of her own company employees who we also suspect was tampering with Elijah Kamski’s thirium recipe.”_

_KCN was sent evidence from New Jericho that we are still independently verifying._

Dayo grunts at the news in some surprise. “What do _you_ think about Speaker Markus?” he asks Connor.

“He’s a fine leader.” A beat. “Busier than he’d like to be.”

Dayo chuckles at this, once. But asks nothing else.

And then dinner arrives.

The family sits around a larger dining table while Connor sits to the side, at a kitchen island, squinting at some entertainment magazine left upon it. Emma chats quietly with her aunt and uncle about people Connor has never heard her speak of before now.

He chances a glance at Emma’s face. She has on one of her many masks -- quiet, withdrawn, straightforward, eyes distant.

“So, Connor,” Dayo asks after some time, hoisting some chow mei fun on chopsticks. “What do you do?”

“I’m a detective with the DPD,” he announces as if by rote.

Dayo shakes his head and taps his mouth with a napkin, swallowing down his food. “I mean, outside that?”

Connor has come to hate this question very much.

“I like to read,” he says flatly. He tries to smile, but it feels like the days before deviancy, where all expressions felt like a mask. “I have taken some interest in...drawing.”

“He’s good. I’ve seen them,” Emma says, stepping in with unusual deft. “Did you clean your workshop yet?”

And so she once again turns the conversation away from him, doing so over and over again, giving no one any chance to bring up any conversation topics of use, such as what Claire is hiding or why they are even here.

Humans don’t like to talk about the obvious things. That instinct is among the worst qualities of the people he loved most.

Then, as they begin to put away dishes and stash leftovers in the tall, chromium fridge, Claire looks to Connor pointedly. “Do you need anything tonight? We have a few spare rooms, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

A fairly polite way of dancing around the android question of sleep.

He looks pointedly to Emma, and he is stilled by her hardened gaze. Many thoughts cross his mind as his social programming struggles to catch up.

If he were a human man, the understanding would be certain -- one would slip into the other's room once the household had gone to bed, no questions asked. Humans navigated by ridiculous social mores in order to provide each other the cold comfort that all is functioning by the book even as it rather explicitly is not. Everyone pretends. No one says anything.

But Connor is not human; there is no true understanding. Not of the need for subterfuge or for the strange comfort of knowing negligence. He is, quite frankly, at his wit’s end over it. His fear that he will hurt her is losing the battle against his desire to feel her hands pulling him down to earth. He’s stunned into silence, unsure what he even wants.

But then Emma clears her throat and says, "Actually, auntie, he'll be staying with me."

Dayo freezes in place in front of the dishwasher, turning to look at his niece with wide eyes. But Claire wears the expression of a woman who finally finished a long and complex blueprint.

" _There_ it is," Claire says. “I wondered what I’d have to do to make you to say it.”

* * *

Not much later, as if to avoid any potential conflict, Emma starts up the stairs to go to bed.

“Wait,” Claire says. “Connor, can I talk to you?”

He knows what he wants, now. He wants to be alone with Emma, outside her family’s curious, stolen glances and pointed silence on...everything. They think he doesn’t notice.

Of course it will not be that easy.

Emma stops, turning around in a minor panic.

“Of course,” Connor says. He gives Emma a small nod and she deflates a little. With a sour thrill, he realizes Emma’s exhaustion may be deeper than he originally expected. She’s being unusually compliant.

And then she leaves.

Claire watches up the stairs until she hears a door softly close. She turns to Connor. Her stress levels were...unusually high, considering the glass of wine in her hand. Dayo hangs back in his chair, seemingly not listening.

Maybe he would see forward momentum on the case tonight after all.

“You seem nice, but I am her aunt, so I would feel...remiss...if I didn’t ask. Your intentions.”

Or maybe not...

“My intentions?”

"You aren't very subtle," she says, raising an eyebrow at him as she circles the white wine in its glass. She stands tall as she can, as if to challenge him, but she’s only 5’3”. "She's told me enough about you before I knew about your...situation that I had a feeling you were someone important." He thinks of that, that he had lived in a story Emma once told to her family. About her inelegant phrasing. About his _situation_. "And most official protection officers don't wait by a girl's bedside. Not unless that's in the book somewhere."

"It's not," he confirms quietly.

Claire stares at his collarbone level for a long moment. Her heart rate is elevated. Her eyes narrow. “I’m not sure how to ask this…”

“She wants to know if you really care about Emma or not,” Dayo says, unbothered. He leans over in his chair, setting his tablet, chirping with some cheery puzzle game music, on his lap.

Claire’s face blooms into a very specific kind of mortification. “...yes--”

“And the android thing is part of it,” Dayo supplies in a straightforwardness Connor can’t help but appreciate, despite pangs of an empty...something.

“ _Dayo_.” Claire looks off, pained.

“What?” Dayo says. “No use dancing around it. You know we never had one around, Clairie.” A nickname, Connor notes. “And he’s a detective. He’s not an idiot.”

_Never had an android? They seem well-off._

_Recollection: Dayo is a contractor. Unwillingness to be replaced? Stubbornness? Family resentment?_

“Okay, yes. Right. We’re both just...I mean, Emma hasn’t had a…” Claire puts a hand to her forehead.

As Claire stumbles over her words to try and make up for some potential slight, his processors whir. What answer did they want? What answer could he supply?

What did he _intend_?

The weight of the question hits him in a slew of code. All the futures it could hold. All the futures he’d never allowed himself to consider. A number of platitudes summoned from movies he’d seen appear in his vision as options, but he wipes them away just as he ignores the various calculations on lifespan, typical human family structures and Emma’s emotional and physical health.

“I recognize that I am...different from her,” Connor says, adapting the same hesitations as Claire. The doubting faces of the doctor, of Natalie, of the two he is speaking to now sear into his vision. “We’re still figuring it out.”

He nearly winces at the discordance that chimes within his BIOS at the thought, random as it seems, that Emma could figure things out a whole different way. That his systems could all be wrong. That everyone else had reason to doubt.

“But I intend to be with her as long as she will allow me to be,” he says, fighting it.

The discordant note echoes and echoes and echoes, fading entirely too slowly.

_How long will that be?_

Claire stands up straight. She looks Connor in the eye. “You really love her.”

“I do,” he says, with a fierceness he did not intend.

Claire leans back slightly, as if trying to look at him from a different angle.

“I don’t mean to sound surprised because you’re an...android.” She seems to regret saying it as soon as she starts, but she still finishes it. “It’s just been a while since our girl had people like you. People that aren’t us.”

“I understand,” he says, with a magnamanity he didn’t know he could summon.

Claire sits down in a plush armchair next to Dayo now that, it seems, the hard part of the conversation is over. Dayo holds her free hand. “I can’t believe she managed to keep all that from us. The investigation…she’s been through so much.”

Connor gets the sense she is speaking of more than just the investigation.

“I know,” Connor says. “She needs answers, Claire. I need answers. If you have them…”

“Let her sleep,” Claire says. “Then we’ll talk about it.”

[STRESS LEVELS: 77%]

“...you’re very anxious about this,” Connor observes.

Claire settles back into her chair, looking thoughtfully into her glass of wine.

“All families have secrets. Not all families have secrets like Shara.” She looks pained. “I swear to you, Connor. I only ever wanted to keep her from my sister’s messes. And I couldn’t do that near as well as I wanted.”

Connor reconstructs almost immediately from what he knows about Emma, her timeline and her family: “You did not approve of Shara’s life.”

“That’s blunt,” Claire says, almost amused, but her tone fades into something sadder. “You’re right. I didn’t. I didn’t like her moving that poor girl every year, every six months in some cases. I told her, let her live with us. Let us give her some stability after the life she had...Emma told you?”

Connor nods. “Foster care, yes. She doesn’t remember any of it.”

“Right. She doesn’t now, thank God.” Claire sets the wine glass down and leans against her free hand, looking at nothing. “But Shara wouldn’t hear of it. She’d hang up on me if I even tried to approach it. And I get it, I had my own babies, but…” She shakes her head slowly. “I did what I could from afar...”

She trails off.

“And then they died,” Connor provides as summation.

Claire raises both her eyebrows but does not look him in the eye. “And it was too late by then.”

Connor leans forward slightly. “What do you have, Claire?”

“I’m not sure,” she says. “But I’m not telling you without talking to her, too.”

“Some things cannot be avoided,” Connor says. “Putting it off won’t make it easier.”

She sighs. “Just give me tonight. To figure out what to say to her. You don’t even know if this will help you, and you _know_ how she is about them.”

The probabilities calculate. He knows he will have little success in swaying her otherwise. The house is well-defended and watched. There’s been little to no sign of Abel in recent days. And when he looks at Dayo, the man’s face is wrinkled with old, old worry. He shakes his head nearly imperceptibly -- matching outwardly the feeling Connor gets whenever Emma has to confront something to do with her family.

“Tomorrow, then,” Connor concedes.

Despite a lack of mission progress, he isn’t particularly upset to see the conversation end.

* * *

The warm water feels like flimsy Teflon against her problems, but damn does it feel good. She sits in her aunt’s unnecessarily nice guest bathroom suite tub and _indulges_. She fills the bath with frothy bubbles like she’s eight years old and dabs rose and lavender oil within like she’s some witchy woman from the back-country and settles back, trying to think of nothing.

She’s largely successful -- her migraine medicine absolutely slams the doors against all cognizant thought -- until she hears Connor’s mildly panicked voice in the bedroom next door.

“Emma?”

“I’m in here,” she calls back. She sinks down under the thick layer of bubbles so that only her head could be seen, heart flopping like a stupid fish. “Uh...you can come in, if you want.”

The door opens in a soft click. Connor pauses in the doorway, LED spinning yellow. She laughs a little at his deer-in-headlights expression.

“You never seen a bath before?”

“Are you sure you want me in here?” he asks, voice unusually quiet.

“Take your damn blazer off,” she says, smiling like a fool. But there’s something else about his expression, eyes cast askance, hands fidgeting at his sides, that makes her want to smooth his hair and kiss his nose. He does what she asks, sliding the blazer off his shoulders and throwing it on the white comforter behind him.

He turns back around and smiles, brittle as glass. Something in her shakes. “Come here,” she says softly, lifting a sudsy hand slightly out of the tub.

He takes off his shoes, placing them by the door, and rolls up his white sleeves as he approaches, watching her unreadably with those huge, dark eyes. Guilt hits her all over again like a goddamn truck.

“I'm sorry, Con,” she says. “I really am. For everything.”

He kneels down by the tub, but he doesn’t look at her just yet. “None of it is your fault.”

She leans her head over the tub wall and reaches a hand out for his. He hesitates for only a moment before he takes it. “...I felt some of what you felt. In the...thing.” She looks at his collarbone, unable to meet his eyes. “You were really afraid.”

He nods minutely.

“Was it the memories or…me looking at them?” she asks.

He holds her palm against his cheek. “Both,” he says quietly. “I was not a good person.” He shifts, leaning closer to the tub. “I don’t think you would have liked me.”

She squints, trying to catch the flashes of him she’d seen during the interface. So much blue blood. “I thought you were just a flagship detective type.”

His eyes freeze over. Moments pass like a glacier melting.

“I was,” he says. “But I was mainly a deviant hunter.”

_....oh_.

Cruelly, her mind springs unbidden a thought of someone as ruthlessly efficient as Connor chasing after someone like Ryker. Her heart roars.

“I was assigned to turn them in,” he continues. “Assigned to stop... _this_. No matter the cost.”

She thinks of the time he took his knife back from her. How exacting and clear the motion was.

She thinks of how single-minded he’d been about Abel.

She thinks of the strange news report she heard just over a year ago...a single android, raiding Cyberlife tower.

Realization hits like a cold dawn.

“But then you deviated,” she says slowly. “Because the cost was too high.”

His eyes narrow.

“I killed people without a second thought,” he says, as if trying to remind her. “My own people. Humans…” He shuts his eyes against whatever he is seeing. “I saw glimpses of a...me...that never would have fully accepted you.” His voice goes quieter and quieter. “...and it scares me to think of how much I've changed…how much I _could_ change...”

His hand is tight against hers. His fingers start to tremble.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says softly. “You’re okay.”

She holds on in silence until his shaking ends. She holds on until the emotionless mask fades away in the twitching of his brow, the flicker of his mouth.

And suddenly his eyes open -- meeting her gaze in a bright flash.

The way he’s looking at her is too much. Too clear, like she’s the lake horizon on a perfect spring day, and he can see everything for miles.

She frees her hand to tug at his little forehead curl.

She’s not sure she can survive being looked at like that any longer.

"What did auntie want?" she asks.

He’s quiet for a moment, looking away. Her hand snakes back into the warmth of the tub and he messes with his sleeves almost self-consciously.

“She asked after my ‘intentions’.”

Emma can’t help but laugh at this. “No way.”

“She did,” he says solemnly.

A thrill goes up her neck. She sets an arm up on the tub wall. “Well, what did you say?”

He casts his gaze back up at her. “That I want to be with you. As long as you allow me...” His eyes waver. “If today hasn’t changed your mind.”

She stares.

Her mother sometimes spoke of the moment she knew that she would marry the man who became her father -- how strangely clear the thought was, completely unbidden. For her mother, it was the moment her father declared he would wait out all of her terrible boyfriends. That it didn’t matter how long he would have to wait, because Shara’s happiness was all that mattered and there was no one else for him in the world. Mom had apparently been sitting on a toilet when she got that call. Broke up with her boyfriend the very next day without a single tear.

Never looked back.

A little over a year ago, Connor did not even exist. But the thought is clear as a winter day. _This is it for me._

“Are you serious?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer.

“ _Con._ ”

He watches her with a desperation she’s never seen before. She leans forward slightly.

“The real question is...”

Her hand resurfaces with suds, bopping him on the nose.

“Do you wanna deal with me for that long?”

She gets his cheek before he can recover, depositing a large pile of bubbles there. She reaches up to suds his hair, too, but his reflexes recover in time. He lightly grabs her wrist, smiling.

"Yes." He sticks out a tongue at the bubbles still on her skin.

“Connor!” She laughs brightly.

“It is soap,” he announces. He finally breaks into a grin as she bursts into laughter. He gingerly places the bubbly hand against his face. “They’re soft.”

But just as gloriously as the smile appears, it begins to fade. His eyes scan her face, over and over...

"But I don't want to...limit you,” he says. “Limit your options, or...make you uncomfortable...or somehow hurt you and not know it..."

She feels fucking fuzzy on the inside, which she always found stupid to read in a book, but shit. That’s literally what it feels like.

"I live in fear of you, bubbleface."

He wipes at the suds on his cheek. "I'm serious, Emma."

She settles both arms up on the wall of the tub, laying her head on them despite the chill of the ceramic against her front. The water _swooshes_ softly as her body shifts. "Listen to me.” She puts a suds-free hand on his the top of his head. “You _saved_ them, Connor. I saw the way Natalie looked at you.” And how could he not see it when he looks in the mirror, those doe eyes looking back at him? “You _want_ to be good. That shit matters. You _help_ people. You're smart and funny and you have so much going on inside that I want to know about…”

She runs a finger down his forehead, down his nose, over his lips, leaving a trail of water, shining.

“You _have_ changed,” she says, “but you get to choose what that looks like, now.”

He grabs her hand and kisses her palm and presses against it like he's fighting something else, unable to look at her. Unable to speak.

"I don't know all that complex shit about...pre-deviancy and all that. I dunno who’s at fault,” she continues, despite the sudden _tug_ in her gut. “But. They say the only way you can really apologize for something is by accepting that you did wrong and then _doing some shit_ about it.” She clears the unexpected emotional blockage in her throat.

Not changing, sticking to an old life script, pretending nothing is different…she’s tried that for so long and all it’s brought her is sawdust.

It was only when she decided to _try_ at something for once in her life that she met him.

“And I think I’ll risk it with an ex-deviant hunter trying to do good if the alternative is _not_ being with you.”

She tries to smile. He’s staring at her so intently over the palm of her hand that she wonders if she’ll be sent careening through the void, back and back into her own head...

But then his hands smooth up her arms, tracing her damn existence, all the way up to her shoulders, leaning forward until his forehead is against hers. His arms encircle her and his palms reach her back, just under her neck. Even in the warm water, she feels her body stiffen, as if ready for a fight.

"Why do you do this?" he asks softly, breath brushing her skin. "I can tell. You tense up whenever I do anything to be closer to you."

Something punches her sternum. "I...we were just talking about _you_. It's not my turn."

"It’s not about turns.” A ghost of a smile. “You made that up.”

Emma squints. Found out.

“You're worried something's wrong with you," he says, voice soft even as he somehow excavates her secrets straight from her bones.

"Yeah, well. What if there is?" Look somewhere else. Look anywhere but him. But there is nowhere else but the great expanse of him, in that damn button-up. "And I'm dying or messed up inside?”

He leans forward until their noses cross.

"Then we’ll solve it," he whispers, sure as if she’d just announced a puzzle competition and not a serious health mystery. One of his hands slips down her back into the water. Even with the warmth, she is exactly certain of where his fingers go, smoothing down her spine. She takes in an involuntary breath. "You aren't alone in this, either.” His other hand touches her face, then slowly slides around her neck, behind the hair that refuses to stay on top of her head. “You are my Emma."

She feels frozen in place as he kisses the corner of her eye.

“And I love you…”

The top of her cheekbone.

“...so much.”

Her jawline.

“ _Are_ you trying to kill me?” she asks. The words barely make it out from the heated coil forming in her abdomen.

He smiles against her skin. “I’m reminding you…” His fingers press into her back under the water. “...and I’m tired of people _doubting_ it.”

A heated wave of sheer _want_ sends her heart into near arrhythmia. Fuck what anyone else thought -- including that part in the back of her mind that was shrieking _you don’t deserve this._

“You could maybe fit...in here…” The confidence in her voice dies immediately, fleeting and gone.

He considers it a moment. “I’m not sure I’m up for explaining that mess to your aunt. Or speaking to her again about anything for a while.”

She laughs. “Yeah...now that you mention it.” She points to her towel resting on the counter by the tub, and he moves to get it for her.

Something in her head clicks.

“...can you hold it up for me?” she asks.

And he does so, of course, face placid with trusting love, but he looks pointedly away so that she can rise from the water in peace. Without any eyes on her.

It strikes her as deeply kind.

Her mind recoils a moment in deep, irrational fear, but she wants to set the example. Of making it okay. Of trusting the other.

And she hardly feels she has the right to hide things from him anymore after today.

She doesn’t want to.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You can look at me.”

It takes a moment, as if he is considering her request. He turns toward her, carefully.

His eyes move up and down, widening slightly -- as if shocked to see _her_ , all of the freckles he loved across her broad, toned shoulders and down her arms, thick with years of work and scarred from at least two accidents. Her hair cascades down her back in frustrated coils. Her face burns bright orange.

He meets her eyes as he takes the towel and starts by pulling it around her back and shoulders, bringing his hands near her front as she is largely covered once again. “We’re real,” he whispers, as if seeking confirmation. “This is real.”

“It is,” she says. “It has to be.”

In another flash of confidence, as if summoned from some summer place, she leans up and kisses him, her mouth open. His hands tighten around the front of the towel, tugging her closer. She presses in--

But then he breaks it off to pick her up, like he did the first time they kissed, and brings her to the bed, laying her down gently over the perfect white comforter.

He leans over her for a moment, arms on either side of her head, searching her face.

She looks back. _You have no idea,_ she realizes. _No idea how stuck with me you are._

And then he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her, with increasing desperation like any more time apart from her will kill him, pushing her into the bed with his own weight. She struggles out of the towel cocoon, afraid but _hoping_. She wants to feel what it’s like when there’s nothing there to keep them apart.

Eventually her hands break free and she wraps her arms around his neck. His hands cup her face and dig into her hair.

“It’s okay,” she whispers again and she moves one hand, white now with his real skin exposed, to her bare chest, where her heart is.

He freezes in place, seeking her heartbeat.

She feels a hot buzz pulse through her. Something near an electric shock, sending white spots to her vision and an image of herself, hair blowing in the snow...

He sighs into her mouth, wrists and arms turning white as they slide over her chest and down her sides, fingers wrapping around her hip bones.

“I want to know all of you,” he breathes into her neck. “I want to understand…”

She skims her fingers up his warm back, under his shirt. “Me too,” she whispers.

He leans up to look her in the eye, mouth slightly open, searching, _yearning._

She has no time to sort through it. All thoughts cease as his lips crush hers and his hands move everywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shara's story is almost exactly the story of how i knew i was gonna marry my husband. it just kinda Be Like That. I was 18. These things...happen.
> 
> come hang out with me on tumblr: @witchfall  
> i just reblog a lot of stuff there but would love 2 chat.  
> going on vacation!!! updates will return in 2-3 weeks. <3


	12. when fire catches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on out, a major TW that Abel is generally an extremely creepy, horrible individual that imposes himself on everyone -- particularly Emma. Almost every scene with him involves themes of (nonsexual, I'm not going there) non-consensual relationship everything. As someone who has been affected by such behavior in my real life, I feel great empathy for why such a character may be problematic to read, but I hope the exploration is interesting enough.
> 
> Additionally, we are entering a more violent phase of the story, so TW for blood and injury, including gunshots.

[INCOMING MESSAGE: MARKUS.RK200.MANFRED]

[8:36 a.m.] MARKUS.RK200.MANFRED: Are you free to chat? Important info is in.

Connor looks down at a sleeping Emma, tucked into his arm, face soft with sleep. His breathing rhythm is currently matched to hers. Markus’ message is the first disruption to that in six hours.

[8:36 a.m.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: Give me 2 minutes.

He slowly shifts his arm out from under her warm back, afraid to shake her from this small peace. Afraid to ruin it.

"Mmmmmup," she suddenly says, eyes still closed. "I'm up."

Mission failed, indeed. He brushes her hair off her cheek and leans down to kiss her there. "You can still sleep. I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn’t," she says sleepily. It sounds closer to _dint_. His lie detector does not chime, but he remains suspicious, leaning up on his elbow to watch her. "Where you going?"

"I have to check something for work."

She rubs her face and slaps her hands down over the white comforter.

"I should probably get up anyway," she considers, without much movement in said direction.

"Are you feeling better?" he asks quietly.

She nods slowly, eyes squinting against the morning light, and he feels that delicious warmth of endearment spread through his biocomponents. He taps her nose once -- a gesture she did to him that he cannot stop thinking about -- and extricates himself from the bed, putting on more decent clothes than just pants for sleeping (a human comfort object he wasn't certain on just yet) and a t-shirt (mostly positive thus far). With a last look at Emma, still not having moved, he heads downstairs and outside to call Markus.

"Sorry for the delay," Connor says as soon as Markus answers, though he isn't really that sorry. "What did you need?"

"Josh caught some unusual pings on our servers this morning. Just odd enough. A human likely wouldn't have noticed, but Josh thinks someone has been in our servers who shouldn't be."

"How does this keep happening?" Connor replies, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice.

"Take a guess," Markus says, equally annoyed. "Keep your guard up today. Abel might be trying to find a way in."

"My guard is always up regarding this investigation."

"I know, it's...nevermind. We'll keep an eye on it here and inform the peacekeepers. Seems like our plan to smoke him out might have worked."

Connor marches back upstairs, adjusting his white collar. He would take Emma straight back to the DPD as soon as her aunt relinquished whatever it was she wanted to show Emma so badly. He would remain near her today as he keeps up on the case, already calculating the various ways he could split his processes between the two priorities. She will likely need to call Ryker. The WR600 will ask questions and potentially disrupt the investigation if not kept abreast of the situation...

He opens the door to Emma still lying in bed, glaring down at her phone.

His thirium pump skips. "What's wrong?"

"Got my official rejection from the HAIT program," she says, voice high with frustration. "That was fast."

Connor purses his lips for a moment. She likely would not want to hear about his relief. Luckily, she takes his silence for sympathy and sinks back into her pillows, staring at nothing. "What the fuck could be so wrong with my brain?"

He sits by her on the edge of the bed. "Absolutely nothing is wrong with you.”

She rests her arm around his waist with such casual lightness he is stunned to silence, reconsidering the definitions of certain words. "I see a 'but' forming," she says.

"My statement is entirely correct.” He eyes her. She smirks. "The 'but' regards your aunt. There is a specific reason that I accepted you staying here."

"Not because I asked nicely?" Her tone treads the line between amused and angry. "...auntie did mention a...deal or something."

"She claims to have information for you. I promise that is all I know about it." He raises a hand. "I do not know what type or what it looks like or if it's relevant."

"Connor." Her hand tightens against his shirt.

"I know,” he says, apologetic. He’s entirely too aware of how much she hates surprises. “I tried to get your aunt to talk about it last night but she would not for a similar reason I feared discussing it with you. You were too exhausted to be ambushed. You would not have responded well at all."

She sighs at his minor attempt at a half-joke. The [ERRORS] in his vision repopulate. "Goddamn police."

"Please use my correct title. I am a detective."

She pulls her hand from his grip and pushes him lightly away with a palm against his lower back. "Hilarious." Her tone is flat and he can feel the tension in her body from here. Yet her mouth twitches in a slight smile. Not a complete failure. "Okay, Dr. Professor Know it All. Let's get this over with."

* * *

Emma sits on the same couch from last night, facing her standing aunt. Her uncle sits in his recliner, but he is leaning forward over his knees. She feels like she is about to be given an intervention.

They’d already tried to insist on breakfast before this conversation and she’d pointedly refused. Her family and Connor already used their one chance to conspire and hide things from her. That time out is now up.

Her aunt crosses her arms to try and stop pacing and eventually just settles on the ottoman directly across from Emma, hands against her forehead as she considers her first words.

“Your mother was...more than just a computer engineer,” Claire begins, hands falling to her lap. “She was one of the best AI developers alive. Even I knew the stuff she could write up was just...something else. Did you know she worked with the same woman who mentored Elijah Kamski?” That name needed no explanation, of course, but...

“Amanda Stern,” Connor says. His hand tightens around hers. She doesn’t know the significance of _that_ name to him, but the way he tenses up sets her on edge.

She had a feeling her mother was more gifted than she let on. Emma had seen her coding unintelligible things late at night when neither of them could sleep. It was exactly like her mother, however, to reveal none of this.

Claire just nods, either not noticing the tension or ignoring it.

“She had it all with Ji-hun.” Her face darkens in further sadness at the name. “God. Ji-hun…” She looks off to the floor a moment, hand to her heart, remembering.

It strikes Emma that auntie also missed her father, which felt like a hearing a thrown voice.

Claire casts a steadying glance to Connor. “It’s strange but...you sort of remind me of him. In the way you carry yourself.”

“It is a great regret of mine that I will not be able to meet them,” he says solemnly. Emma’s heart flips. She could only _imagine_ the discussions that would have taken place in the house of a biomechanic and an AI mastermind regarding her android boyfriend. What would they have thought, seeing her and Connor together? There was no way to know, now, and that's where the old pain still fucking stings.

Claire’s smile flickers and she looks to the floor as if galvanizing herself.

“Shara and Ji-hun were never...super forward about their lives. And Shara and I...well, you know.”

And Emma did know. The relationship was volatile -- some days perfect sisters chatting about the meaning of life, other days resulting in her mom hanging up the phone in a sudden karang of fury.

“But she never even hinted to me at all, not once, that they were interested in adoption. And you know these processes take some time. I don’t know if it was meant to be a surprise to the family or...some sort of weird grief response to having lost Ma and Pa, but...not long after they adopted you, their suddenly bright careers turned into...I don’t know what. But you know the consequences pretty well.”

“Moving everywhere,” Emma says. Connor leans forward slightly, clearly in problem solving mode.

Claire makes a sound of assent. “One day they were working for some company on any number of secret, classified projects that would change the world, or something, to hear Ji-hun talk about it...the next...they couldn’t hold jobs down if their lives depended on it,” Claire continues. “And with a new little girl in tow, no less. It always struck me as...just... _sad._ Like someone was out to get them.”

Secret projects. Genesis Biotech. Claire was onto more than she knew.

“I tried to offer my help but they both outright refused. Even Ji-hun. He said to me once...and I don’t think he even wanted to say it. He said... _don’t worry about this too much, Claire_. _It’s for your own good._ And I said...you’re my damn family! Of course it’s for my own good! And he hung up not long after that…”

She looks out her window, into the perfect suburban neighborhood where nothing ever went wrong.

“I tried not to get suspicious but my gut was telling me something was...off.”

Claire waves a hand, as if to try and move past this section of the story. As if to wipe away the mist forming in her eyes and in her voice.

“But. I tried to stay out of it. You know. Except when I didn’t.” And Emma knows that to be true. She remembers waiting just around the corner for her mother to get off the phone.  _Emma stays with us. No, I don’t think she’ll handle the separation well._ “But then one day...many years later, and you’ve just turned 17 and we’d just talked about colleges, you remember?” And Emma nods. Claire had offered to help pay which pissed Mom off for some reason. “And not long after that, I get through damn registered mail, you know, the highly secure stuff, a tiny package from your mother.”

And at this Claire summons forth what looks like a stylized, green USB port in the shape of an old house key with a tiny black top. Connor extends out a hand to take it, but Claire pointedly ignores him, pulling it back toward herself somewhat.

“It came with a note. And all it said was ‘This is for Emma. Give it to her while at your house when the time is right.’”

Emma blanches. Anger buds in her stomach from old, old seeds.

“It’s been nearly ten years, auntie. When the fuck were you going to give it to me?”

“I didn’t know when the time would be right!” Claire says, her own anger and grief breaking through. “She didn’t exactly leave more instructions!”

“Clairie.” Dayo’s simple warning.

Claire glances to him but continues on. “...I was so damn tired of Shara’s secrets. And all I saw was Shara trying to offload them onto you, their innocent daughter, and not her adult family who had been asking after her _for decades_.” Her voice begins to shake with emotion. “So yes. I kept it from you. I wanted to keep you safe, Emma, because I’d ignored my gut for too long. Something was wrong, damn wrong, with whatever they wanted, I could tell. And then, a year later....”

Everyone in the room knew what happened, then.

“I was nearly an adult even before then!” Emma says, unable to keep it back.

“You were not even eighteen! I’d been in senior year of high school once, not sure about anything in my life, and I wasn’t about to add another strange thing to your already fucked up life!”

Emma blinks.

_Your already fucked up life._

A shot over the bow. Direct hit to the hull.

“Why didn’t you give it to me after they died?” Emma spits. “My life was already fucked beyond recognition, wasn’t it?”

The room falls into chilly silence. Claire closes her eyes. Connor squeezes her hand in realization.

“I’m sorry,” Claire says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” Emma feels ugly tears beginning to form. The tears of frustration and baseless hurt that had no answer. “Just give me the damn key so I can leave.”

Claire looks to Dayo, eyes distant. In the corner of Emma’s eye, she sees Dayo nod. Claire finally extends it outward. Connor reaches a hand to take it but Claire pulls it away.

“This isn’t part of your damn investigation. This is for _my niece_.”

Emma hardly misses the possessive nature of the comment. It just makes her feel worse. She snatches out a hand to take the key, but Claire is quick. She grabs Emma’s hand and holds on until they look each other in the eye, the key hovering between them.

“Emmaline, you listen to me,” her aunt says, tears threatening to break. “I know you don’t agree with my choice. I know that. But we love you. That’s why we do what we do.”

Emma yanks her hand away.

“I swear to you I have no idea what is on this,” Claire says. “I know, in my heart, that no matter what is here, they did everything to protect you. Even when I didn’t agree with it. Okay?”

Emma says nothing, and her aunt pulls away with a sigh. Emma keeps her eyes trained on the key even as it blurs in her vision. For this reason, she surmises, and this reason alone does she notice the tiny green text suddenly light the black part of the key.

It’s a screen.

BIOANALYSIS...

She feels something warm zip through her body, like she’d touched a doorknob after wearing wool socks.

BIOANALYSIS: TRUE  
GEOCACHE: TRUE  
KEY: UNLOCKED  
PASSWORD: WHAT IS OUR SECRET?

“What the fuck?” she whispers.

“An information drive?” Connor leans over her shoulder. “What password is it asking for?”

She doesn’t say anything. A nonsensical touch of fury seizes her heart. Leave it to her mother to send a ridiculously stupid key and then require a key for that key. The shape of the object isn’t lost on her.

What could possibly be on here that would require so much protection?

The question makes her cold.

“We will take it and analyze it,” Connor says, half as comfort and half as announcement. She continues to squint at it. _What is our secret? That we’re a family of fuck-ups? What do you want from me, Mom?_

Suddenly, Connor leans away from her, LED flashing yellow in the corner of her eye. “I have to take this,” he says, apparently receiving a call. In an instant, he is stepping outside leaving her alone with her only living family.

Emma looks awkwardly to the floor.

“Well,” Claire says, as if to clear the air. She starts toward the kitchen, gesturing Emma forth. “Your boy is interesting. Not your usual type.”

“What type?” Emma says, following after slowly. “Human?”

“ _Emmaline_.” Claire puts her hands on her hips, finally looking the part of nagging aunt. Wrinkles form around her eyes. “Why is everything I say to you taken like an attack?”

Emma looks away. She feels guilt, perhaps. Her aunt always makes her feel like a teenager again and she can’t blame her for caring. But Emma also can’t help but think she’d never felt this level of miscommunication -- this absolute level of _misconnection_ \-- with any android, at least not once she’d become their friend. Is that the power of social-forward programming and an instilled interest in listening first? Or is that just her luck, that she doesn’t quite fit in except with artificial people made to be _nice?_

“Sorry,” she mutters, only half-meaning it.

Her aunt raises her eyebrow as she turns toward the kitchen. “Your usual type are bad boys and girls, for the record.”

Seeing as she had only ever sent her aunt a picture of herself with two other boyfriend/girlfriend adjacent people in the distant past -- like high school past -- she finds the hypothesis pretty damn lame. She opens her mouth to tease her aunt about it just as the front door slams open.

Emma whirls to see Connor watching her with a schooled expression, back straight, hand where she knows he hides his gun.

He crosses the living room in a matter of three strides and grabs Emma’s shoulders. He looks into her face with deep intent. “Listen to me,” he says.

She can see it in his widened eyes that he is making the request long established now between them. _I always listen to you._ She opens her mouth to question, which is against the rules; she can’t help it. But then she hears the unmistakable sound of muffled gunshots coming from outside.

“Take your aunt and uncle somewhere safe,” he says, voice hard.

Something squeezes inside of her. Her entire body, pitching a rebellion. _You are not doing this alone._ “Connor--”

“What the hell was that?” Claire suddenly asks.

Connor doesn’t allow Emma to break his gaze. His hands squeeze her shoulders so hard she is certain she will bruise there. “Please.”

Her heart falls from a great height, but her traitorous body nods, slowly, as she looks toward Claire and Dayo, watching out the window in frozen horror. Shouting starts outside, unrecognizable in its pitch.

Time spins away from her like jacks in a game.

More gunshots.

“The basement!” Emma says sharply, the steel sparking with new temperance. Her choice is made. She stomps toward Claire and Dayo, arms out to herd them forth. “Now!”

Perhaps thanks to their wayward niece commanding them with such intensity, they comply without question, rushing toward a door in the kitchen.

She wants, illogically, to imprint Connor’s face to memory before she can move. She catches his eyes for a single moment, as if she could ever be happy with _just enough_. But she’s made a promise.

She listens. She goes.

And she considers the weapons at her disposal.

* * *

[OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: REMOVE EMMA FROM SITUATION]

Connor pulls his concealed gun from its holster and sets himself up by the front door. He ensures for the third time that it is loaded.

_One of the guards hasn’t reported in at the scheduled time._

_Shit. I’ll start--_

And that’s when the first guard went down, attacked by another with a blue, buzzing stick.

[SCANNING...]

[NO GUNSHOTS IN PAST 32 SECONDS. MOMENTARY LAPSE IN ACTION. MOVE?]

He runs various calculations on where the attacker may try to enter. A minor peek out the closest window reveals little except a clean yard and a few UN guards on the ground, life signs uncertain. Projections indicate the suspect is most likely in the front of the house, but only by a slim majority. There’s a 48% probability he attempts to enter through a side window or the back door.

He waits for 15 seconds more, all sensors set to maximum. He hears no movement.

So it’s his move, then.

Connor reaches an arm to open the front door and yanks it open, thus immediately expanding his sensor range. A single standing human, waiting a few meters away.

A swift peek around the corner reveals a familiar mop of dark hair and pale skin, standing motionless at the end of the yard's path in the same navy blue of the UN contingent. He stares intently at the front door. No gun shots.

Yet.

[NAME: ABEL FLYNN // ???INCONCLUSIVE  
BORN: ???INCONCLUSIVE / 2013  
PRIME SUSPECT IN CASE:876BCA]

He sends a single message to DPD dispatch: [SUSPECT ABEL FLYNN SPOTTED AT 116 VELVET GROVE. IMPERSONATING UN GUARDS. REQUESTING BACKUP.]

And then, gun up, he turns out the door, firing off a shot at the calculated spot his program predicted Abel would be--

Except Abel is rushing the door and he’s already _almost to the front step_.

_A miscalcuation?_

The shot grazes Abel’s shoulder, but the wrong arm. Not his gun arm. Abel’s pistol rises. Connor dives to the left, easily dancing out of the way of the shot. The wood of the doorframe explodes behind him--

[////CRITICAL ERROR&^*%]

[SYSTEM OVERLOAD POSSIBLE]

Electricity arcs white hot between his biocomponents as the baton wedges into his side, showering everything in sickening red ERRORs. His legs glitch and he falls to his knees. An unknown frequency shrieks inside his skull. Two hands seize him by his collar and throw him backward into the foyer like he’s a child’s toy, and all he can do is watch as his gun slips from his cold, twitching hands. It clatters on the hardwood floor with a terrible, ringing finality.

Abel steps over his body.

[DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE.]

The twitching finally stops just as Abel places a foot on his chest.

“I’ve been studying you,” Abel growls. “I can’t fucking wait to watch you bleed.”

Connor sweeps his legs, prompting Abel to jump, and Connor rolls out from under him just as Abel slams a foot down with enough force to crack the floor. Connor curls up to his feet just as Abel tackles him, as if he knows exactly where Connor is going to go at any given moment…

Readings whirring in the back of Connor’s head register the man’s unusual body heat, something akin to a human fever or biocomponents without coolant. Connor twists his grip to grasp Abel’s wrists, keeping the man’s hands engaged and his weapons useless, if for a moment. But Abel’s eyes still watch with the keen light of someone who is _in control_ , pushing and pushing and pushing.

“The TV performance by the Speaker’s PL600 was something else. I’ll give you that.” Abel is close enough that he lays his forehead on Connor’s for a moment, sticky with sweat. “But now I’m free...from trying to pretend.”

Connor realizes his other error: They have left Abel with nothing left to lose.

He throws a gut wrenching punch at Abel’s face, but Abel dodges just in time, swiping Connor with the baton before shoulder slamming him against the nearest wall. Connor’s vision cracks with static.

[...SYSTEM OVERLOADED. RESETTING…]

“So where is my girl, RK800?”

“You won’t...touch her,” Connor spits back with metallic venom, voice modulator broken from the force of the electricity wracking his body. He can taste thirium curdling in his mouth.

“Well, you did a nice job of leading me to her.” He pokes Connor meaningfully in the cheek. “Hope you liked my little gift from last we talked. Nanotechnology is so _fun_.”

The cold sensation of failure sinks his regulator.

The ERRORS, the constant little ERRORs. Not stress. Not exhaustion. A tracker. Waiting for them to make a mistake. 

_Failure._

[RESET 75% COMPLETE]

Connor shouts, wordless, and knees Abel’s abdomen, reaching for the man’s gun as Abel bends over in pain. But it’s not pain. It’s a damn _feint_. Abel whams an arm right into Connor’s abdomen -- right where his regulator rests -- pressing with the weight of a thousand-pound vice.

Connor pushes back but his systems are still resetting. In a single swift movement, Abel releases him -- and then hits Connor across the face with the baton, wraps the other arm around his neck and spins him around so that Connor feels his back line up with Abel’s chest.

[///a/9//r/9//SYSTEM OVERLOADED//]

_nononono_

“I knew you’d be unable to resist the gun.” He nearly whispers in Connor’s ear. “It was in every calculation.”

Abel reaches his hand around under Connor’s shirt to touch his thirium regulator panel. Everything twitches, helpless and random as error code. Thinking solves nothing. Moving solves nothing.

_Don’t let him get to Emma don’t let --_

“...oh. You know it would be really _poetic_.”

The compartment clicks open without resistance.

“If I stole your goddamn heart right out of your body.”

Connor squeezes his eyes shut as he feels foreign fingers wrap around his components. _CRITICAL ERROR, MISSION FAILED, MISSION FAILED, CALL HANK--_

A deafening shotgun blast showers them in drywall dust and wood splinters. Abel reels back in pain as blood sprays from his ear, nearly shot clean off.

A warning shot.

A new variable.

“Hands off!” Emma shouts, clicking another shell into place with expert precision. “I don’t fucking _miss._ ”

* * *

Emma watches Abel’s face melt from abject hatred to an almost tender distress as he realizes her presence. She breathes heavily to try and conquer the cold fear welding her fingers to the trigger of her favorite type of gun.

“Emmie?” Abel says.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” she snaps. “Let him go. Now.” She gestures meaningfully with the gun, careful to keep it aimed where Abel’s own heart should be, blocked by Connor’s open chest cavity. She bites back rising bile.

She might have lawyered his request a little bit. She did go. And now she’s back with a gun from her Uncle’s unnecessarily large firearm collection in the basement.

Connor struggles uselessly against Abel’s hold, his movements stocky and jarring. “Go find Hank,” he says. His voice sounds metallic and choppy, as if yanked from a digital grinder. “Go!”

The distress freezes Abel’s face into a bizarrely youthful mask. She winces at a sudden intense wind of static that nearly sends her body into fits. A new inferno blazes to life behind her eyes.

“...you’re all burnt up inside,” he says. His voice is so soft. Something scratches at her skull, a memory with no face. He pushes forward one step, careful to keep Connor in between them. “You have to come with me so I can fix this. Okay?”

She blinks at the softness of his tone -- like he’s the one talking down an android terrorist. Like he’s the one whose beloved is across the room in the hands of an enemy. Like blood isn’t spilling from the side of his head.

Connor makes a reach for the gun on Abel’s hip. Abel tightens his hand around Connor’s regulator, clicking it over once, as he kicks out at Connor’s knee. Connor loses his balance and slips down in Abel’s grasp, body jerking as his cheek hits the baton in Abel’s other hand.

The pain that spasms across his face -- widened eyes, mouth opening as if to shout -- sends kindling to the fire slowly replacing all the organs in her body.

“Stop!” Emma shouts, desperate. “Hurt him anymore and I will _kill_ you.”

“You don’t understand the depths at which this machine is experiencing errors,” Abel says, voice pitched with worry. “It can’t feel pain. It’s _obsessed_ with you.”

“Oh yeah?” Anger lashes out like a whip. “And who the fuck are you, chasing me across town? Doesn’t sound a little obsessed to you, Abel? Doesn’t sound a little fucked up?”

Abel stares at her, brows furrowing. He’s struggling to comprehend. That scares her more than anything he’s said or done so far. There may be no negotiating, here. She may have to lose too much to get anything in return.

“You don’t remember anything at all,” he says, voice even softer than before. For a moment, it seems his arms are slackening. “You...what did they take from you?”

The depth of loss in his voice prompts her to respond. “What?”

Desolation smothers his voice. “You don’t remember me at all.”

“You killed that woman. All those androids. You did _all of this._ ” Her voice shakes. “I think I would remember a freak like that.”

And that desolation catches aflame -- torment set ablaze by a strange sort of righteousness. His arms tighten and Connor’s mouth purses shut once again. “They brainwashed you. The androids, your parents, the...the whole damn world, it...” In one motion, he throws the baton down and pulls his gun out of his holster. He puts it to Connor’s head, other arm wrapped tightly around his middle.

She hears the gun click as he sets the trigger.

“No!” she shrieks.

She lifts the gun up to aim at Abel’s bleeding ear but he hovers just behind Connor’s head and _she still can’t set up the fucking shot..._

“Run!” Connor calls out, body not cooperating. “Stay alive!”

_Think, Emma, think, stay alive, listen…_

_What can fix this?_

“You said we’d fight it together, Emmie,” Abel continues, words coming from an ancient well, “and they took everything from you. Made you forget who you are, where you come from. Why listen to them? Why be among them? Why--”

She turns the shotgun on herself, just under her chin.

Connor nearly throws himself out of Abel’s grip in his paralyzed throes, but the man holds him back, grey eyes wide with surprise. Both of them shout: “No!”

“If he dies, I won’t go _anywhere else,_ ” she says darkly.

The gun in Abel’s hand falters.

“Don’t do this, Emmie,” Abel says. “Don’t hold onto this. We can never be like them. That’s what you said to me...we have to be different and _stronger_.”

Emma’s hands shake around the gun. The familiar pangs of a migraine burble up, sending auras through her vision, but they’re touched by something else, like a part of her, far back in the past, is screaming. _Who said that to you, Abel?_

_Wouldn’t I know if it had been me?_

“And I’ve had to do it alone for _so long_.” He presses the gun harder against Connor’s temple.

She watches a tear streak down Abel’s face, shimmering in idyllic mid-morning light. Connor’s LED shines yellow and red against Abel’s pale skin, face pinched in a way she knows too well -- the face of someone trying not to remember. His eyes shine, too. He’s somewhere else now in his head. Maybe a place even worse than here.

_Thinkthinkthink._

“Abel,” she says slowly. “I know about being alone.”

Abel’s face flickers in such deep pain that she feels something in her snap in place like a rubber band. “Do you?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. She wishes it was a lie. "Lower your gun, and I’ll put my gun down."

“You’ll come over here,” he confirms.

“I will come over there,” she says, forming a plan as she says it, “and we’ll make it so no one has to die for anything.”

“You put your gun down,” he says. “Before you hurt yourself.”

Connor’s face is frozen in a specific kind of horror, as if trying to figure her out before she did anything stupid -- as if he could do anything about it. She slowly puts her gun on the ground, half of her praying, half of her cursing. _Fuck you, idiot. I know guns better than you know your own ass._

But she rises back just as slowly, hands up.

Watching this show of negotiation, Abel begins to lower his gun as well. He pushes Connor just slightly to the side and takes another step toward her. “We can bring the RK800 if that will make you happy.”

She takes another step.

He puts the gun back on his hip. A touch of uncertainty flashes in his gaze. “Will it?”

Connor kicks out uselessly, still in Abel’s grasp. “Don’t,” he says. Whether it is to her or to Abel, she can’t tell. She ignores the sharp crack threatening to tear her heart in two and just nods, not trusting her voice.

_Anything to see this end._

Abel's mouth chasms into a strange smile -- the smile a man would wear upon seeing his God in the flesh. She’s close enough that when he reaches out his arm, his fingers brush her shoulder.

A single breath. She wraps one arm around herself, just under her shirt, as if pressing on an old wound. And then...

She barrels toward him, pulling her knife out of the hidden sheath, the one Connor had given to her on that day so long ago now, long enough now that when she pulls the harness tight around her waist in the morning (every morning, as instructed, especially now that he’s there to remind her) that she barely thinks about it anymore. Preparing. Weaponizing. She slashes the blade toward his face and feels a thrum of primal satisfaction when she sees dark red blood fly.

Abel stumbles backward in shock and she uses the rest of her momentum to shove him into the wall, releasing Connor from his grip. Connor falls in a heap in the corner of her vision. She lifts the knife and stabs down right where Abel’s heart would be--

But his wits recover and he captures her wrist, stretching her arm out and pulling her close before she can make another attack. Her chest touches his as they struggle for dominance, arms out wide, but his strength is _unnatural_. His skin is hot to the touch, like dark iron left in the sun. His eyes, the grey of summer storms, shine with obsession as his mouth curls into a sick mix between a smile and a grimace.

“What fucking monstrosity of a virus did he install on you?” he says, a whisper spilling across her face. Blood seeps out of the wound on his cheekbone.

_He slithers inside her veins like a twitching slime. A parasite. A worm. His chest against her back, head leaning over her shoulder, voice against her ear as she looks into her memories as if an outsider to her own head._

_We’ll find it, he says, static against her ear drum._

_The smell of water on stone. The scent of flame where no fire should catch. A heavy knocking on a metal door._

She screams as if she’s set alight.

_She presses back, hears the rusty squeak of her defenses bending backward under the attack. Chains shake. Abel tries to flip the page forward. We can’t help you until we find the key, he says._

_She pushes his hand away. Pushes and pushes, feet scrabbling for purchase against a slick floor. She only stands because he is holding her up._

_Connor, watching her from across the diner table like she’s a book in a language he’s still learning._

_Connor, face angry -- she knows it now, watching from a distance, that he (like her, like her in so many ways) had no grasp of how to express the singular pain of watching someone you love drown in their desperation, and so he yells if only for her to hear...Tell me what to do, Emma. How can I fix this?_

_You can’t, love, you can’t fix this._

_Stop it, Abel says. A lighter snapped to life. That’s not…_

_Connor, finally kissing her mouth. The rush, the crushing light of faith realized, in believing that perhaps someone could love with the same ferocity you felt in your own heart._

_Abel shaking the metal door. Connor, always careful, picking her up from the couch and carrying her to bed. I’ve got you, he whispers. Does he know she’s awake now, pretending to sleep so he won’t feel he has to retreat into his thickly drawn box?_

_Why is everything fucking encrypted! My keys should work--_

_A lock cracks. A key falls in a clang. Her whole body jolts. Flashes of memories stained with rust -- a young boy with floppy black hair, smiling at her with unbridled joy despite the dirt on his cheek. Laughing. Hiding under a bed, fear pushing her heart into her throat as she wraps an arm around his back…a house somewhere, in a dark forest, only seen in dreams..._

_His shouts, building in anger._

_Connor, watching as she first enters Detroit. Dark eyes set into a face pale as winter, unsmiling and beautiful as a Michelangelo left to the elements._

**_You think this machine could ever love you like--_ **

Two arms wrap around her middle. The heat suddenly leaves her.

She falls backwards, and she swears she hears Connor’s voice in her head, a desperate incantation consisting of her name alone.

Then the world returns to her in full-color as her back hits the ground and she realizes Connor has switched places with her, somehow. He turns back to look at her, mouthing something -- _Run!_ \-- before everything else happens at once.

Police sirens blare. Abel stands across from her, staring in such a way that she almost believes he could have a broken heart. Connor throws a punch. Something cracks, but she can’t see what as she scrambles back to her feet, her whole body shaking violently. Her vision spins as another migraine threatens to expel the contents of her stomach. Abel’s gun comes back out of its holster as he pushes Connor aside--

A gunshot ricochets against the drywall.

“LEAVE MY NIECE ALONE!”

She turns and sees Uncle Dayo, pistol held up, glaring mightily even as fear widens his eyes. His voice, usually so soft, booms with fury.

“Dayo!” she shouts, but it’s no use. Abel turns his gun toward Dayo, the other hand holding Connor by the neck. One of Connor’s arms is bent the wrong way. Abel’s blue shirt is stained dark from a shoulder wound. His eyes are unseeing from pain and his face shines with blood. It stains his teeth red. 

“She’s not yours,” Abel says.

He lines up the shot.

Everything slows down. The world clicks by in milliseconds as Emma scrambles toward her uncle. Anything to stop this madness. Anything not to lose another part of her crumbly foundation of _her fucked up life_. He’s another piece of her heart to lose -- and for what? She doesn’t have parts left for it. She just has to be _faster_.

Why didn’t he stay downstairs? Why didn’t he listen?

She knows why.

She collides into Dayo just as white hot pain rips into the back of her shoulder.

Connor shouts with a force she’s never heard, voice breaking into static. Abel screeching, in the same moment. _EMMA!_ Somehow she is on the ground. Her vision swims with fire and memories that don’t feel like hers.

“...baby! Oh my god! Emma!”

She pushes her palms against the wood floor. Something hot and sticky streams down her arm. Stabbing, cold agony in her shoulder sends her face to the ground again. Her uncle’s calloused hands push against her back, keeping her there. Her aunt’s bare feet suddenly enter her vision from around the corner, down the hallway.

“You should have let her come with me!” Abel, voice choked with tears. “This is your fault!”

A gun clicks, but it’s out of ammo. She opens her mouth to tell him to stop, but all that comes out is a garbled sigh, choked off with pain.

“Don’t move!” Connor’s pained, metallic voice. “You’ll make it---aaaahhh!” The buzz of the baton. Connor screeching as errors wrack his body. A loud thump as something falls into her eyeline -- Connor, eyes open, not moving.

_Please, God, no._

Police sirens, so close now.

He’s suddenly lifted from her view.

“I’m taking the RK800,” Abel says, as if explaining a storm drill to panicked students, grunting as he lifts Connor. “If she dies, Detroit will burn.”

Shouting on the front lawn. _DETROIT POLICE!_

A voice, cold and shaking. “Don’t die.”

She can’t move to answer. She hears more gunshots near her head as Dayo tries to shoot after Abel. Glass shatters on the mantel. She could have made that shot, if only…

“Find me!” Abel shouts, desperate, voice fading. “Use my keys!”

Remember. Key. Key. A house in a dream. A green thing with a small computer on it, in her pocket still...not his key, someone else’s. Can a memory be a key? Can a dream be a password?

She’s already tried remembering and it didn’t work--

Boots stomp the floors around her. New voices float in and _she can’t move_.

“Emma!” Her aunt, the soft petal scent of her perfume drifting over Emma as the world washes over in a strange monochrome static. “Stay awake, honey. The police are here, okay, we’re gonna fix this, okay?”

She wants to run after Abel. Let him know just how alive she is. She wants to press his eyes out of his sockets. She wants to watch his blood pool on the floor until the image replaces the memory of Connor, unmoving on the ground.

She hears the creaking of that old wooden swing set, and then thinks of nothing else.

* * *

 

.

..

…

….

…..

[EMERGENCY REPAIR REQUIRED]

[PROTOCOL BLOCKED]


	13. where the shadows never show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: extreme manipulation, kidnapping, contemplation of death and the point of living

.

..

...

[ALL SYSTEMS...OK]

[READY.]

Connor blinks against the broken yellow light.

Optical scans reveal little. No windows. Computer detritus from years and years is scattered on the concrete floor in dusty grey. Water from breaking pipes drips onto his forehead. Dirt floats in tired motes, recently kicked up.

This all just _keeps happening_.

But this time, unlike last time he reset, his limbs are strapped via metal restraints to something smooth: a steel work lab table at 15 degrees Celsius. He feels chasming breakage in his core even though diagnostics indicate only his arm has undergone recent repair.

[Emma screaming, Emma shot, bleeding, bleeding, Abel’s hands around her wrist, his mouth close to her cheek--]

He shouts, wordless, to get the memories _out_ , but they will not out. His arms remain strapped. His thoughts continue to dig and dig.

Send a message.

[CALLING---ERROR. NO CONNECTION FOUND.]

“Oh, good. You’re functional. I was worried for a second.”

[ _i'm free...from trying to pretend._ ]

“Though I guess functional is...pushing it.” Abel steps into the light, looking down. His cheek has a bandage adhesive on it and the side of his head is wrapped in dark red gauze. Further scans, nigh automatic, come back as if dipped in magma -- useless and marred by fury. “Stop yelling. No one’s listening.” He lays a gloved hand on Connor’s bicep, flexing hard against the restraints. “You’ll just break your arm again.”  
  
“Why did you fix me?”

Abel lets out a low whistle. “Goddamn, you really are angry, aren’t you?” He leans down closer, as if to tempt Connor to try and bite him, as if Connor is closer to a caged animal than a malfunctioning machine. Connor clenches his jaw and dodges Abel’s searching eyes. “She has some sort of weird attachment to you. Figured you might as well be in one piece for when she gets here.”

A crack in his regulator. “She won’t be coming.”

Abel stands, gesturing upward in both a wave and a shrug. “Oh, she will. We’re both here. We just gotta be patient.” A smirk. “Get to know each other.”

"You don’t care to know me," Connor says, voice cold. Wield truth against fear, Markus told him once, but it isn’t working very well. The truth is the fear.

“Ah, partly true. I only want to know enough.”

_To hurt you._

“Do what you want,” Connor mutters. “I don’t feel pain.”

"Don’t you?” Abel leaves the cone of light and walks toward some shadowed terminal Connor can’t fully see. His pale face is lit a sickly green by its screen. “You can’t be giving up on me that fast."

"It doesn't matter.” Don’t say it, don’t make it true. The probabilities are higher than zero. Unacceptable. _But you must find a way out of here and you know what he wants._ “Emma may be…” In protective custody. Surrounded by guards. Inaccessible. “Dead.”

"She's alive,” Abel says, not looking at him, casually tweezing cables together on some tiny object.

"You shot her."

A ‘hmph.’ No denials. Abel still won’t look at him. “Not my fault.”

Connor’s voice comes out louder than he intends. “You don’t know for sure.”

Abel’s head snaps up. "Neither of us would be here right now if she was gone."

The emphasis feels wrong. He can't tell if it is in the _here_ or the _neither_. Connor’s existence spins on a thin string of code. [SURVIVE ABEL. RETAIN MEMORY.] He notes, somewhere, that Abel can’t bring himself to say it. _Dead._

"You know what I find so interesting about you, Connor?” Abel takes a few steps around the terminal. “Deviancy makes you so fucking angry. That’s really what drove you here. You were pissed. Because I was so close to taking her from _you_.”

Connor sees it now in the dark; something backlights Abel’s eyes. Something orange shines there, like the sun behind a spinning storm cloud. It blinks like an LED.

“But you know, it really is just a virus at the end of the day. I’ll erase all your memories and it won't matter at all." Abel casually returns to fixing his device, unbothered by the one-sided nature of the conversation. “Who are you without your memories? Without your experiences?” A tsk sound. “Just a...machine. Unloveable.”

Connor tenses against the restraints, hands forming fists.

“And you know that, don't you?” Abel eyes Connor’s arms as if looking for fault lines. “The RK series...it's really quite something. I found the blueprints.” He steps closer, placing his little tool on the desk before clasping his hands behind his back. “Onsite forensic analysis. Top tier precision marksmanship capabilities despite a clear _ban_ on androids using guns. The ability to lie and tell stories to get your way. Your... _look_.” His boots thump softly on the concrete as he steps to some device. The table whirs and moves to a semi-upright position, giving Connor the constant sensation that he is close to falling.

“All the pieces but none of the glue,” Abel says as the table rises. “You’re a Class A manipulation bot. Not a person.” The orange glows brighter in his eyes. “Was Emma one of your targets? Did it all start for _show_?”

A deep, clarifying desolation seeps out of his thirium pump. “I would never--”

“Did you know you're technically obsolete? RK900 exists.” Abel glares, his smile silhouetted by thin light. “How does that _feel_? Would she even know the difference?”  
  
He feels like something has been stolen from him, leaving a spot of void where sense should be. His program splits in two. _I am a detective. I enjoy solving crimes and defending people. I draw. I live with Hank Anderson and share his last name. I love Emma. I don’t know what I am allowed to have. I don’t know what it means to want._

_Manipulate the situation to your advantage, or you will cease to remember, rendering all mission parameters moot. You want to succeed. Nothing else matters._

"And who are you, Abel?” Connor levels his gaze with him. “Emma doesn't remember you. You saw that in her head. Either you've made it all up or she's just like me. Breakable as a _machine_.”

Abel slaps him across the face. His head karangs against the metal. She might not even be alive and he’s rubbing her name in the dirt to fell a criminal. He suddenly, viscerally understands what it means to hate. What it means to eat poison and be venomous.

“I don’t know who did that shit to her head. I have a suspicion.” Abel’s voice is quiet. The rage simmers through, red like a hot coil. “And if I’m right, they _deserve_ to be dead. For hurting her like that.”

Was it him who killed her parents? Evidence inconclusive.

“But you’d hurt me just the same. And for what?”

Abel snorts. He steps back, crosses his arms, and spins away, a ghost of a smile on his face. A whisper of a grimace.

“You say you don’t feel pain. But the truth is that you don't understand pain.” His voice wavers in the dark. “You can be reprogrammed to feel nothing at all. We don't have that luxury. Ever. Everything about you can be molded to exactly the way anybody wants it to be. That's not _living._ ”

[SKELETON INCOMPLETE. SYSTEM OF IMPLANTS. QUESTIONS ON PAIN.]

“But isn't that what happened to you?” Connor says.

Abel stiffens, back suddenly straight as an arrow.

“You're an experiment. A prototype. Like me.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“They tried to make you someone they could mold on a whim.”

“I said--”

“Genesis Biotech gave you a whole skeleton of wetware components. That's what happened, isn't it? That's why you can hack so well, why you feel so much pain, why you sought out Carisa. That's why you _killed_ her when she couldn’t help you. When she tried to turn on you.”

Abel slowly turns back around, eyes glittering like a starving predator.

“That's why you're so obsessed with Project Nazirite,” Connor presses. “Because _you're_ Project Nazirite. And you’re still not even sure what that _means_. Because you must have been only--”

Connor trails off, reconsidering the evidence. No. How? He couldn’t have been older than six when Genesis Biotech went under, much less…

But Abel’s grin, still stained rust red, drips with _knowing_.

“You’re only half right,” he says. “I’m the worse half.”

Despite everything, Connor’s processors cannot resist solving a puzzle, even if the pieces freeze his fingertips and stop his lungs.  
  
“See?” Abel says, pushing forward, face only a foot away from Connor’s. “You don't love her. You don't know the half of it. You've just made it up in your own head, some weird fucking delusion about the first person who showed you any sort of softness or kindness!”

And before Connor can teeter completely off the edge of this point -- before he can snap back that she wasn't the first, before the truth of it sinks in, how much he doesn’t know -- Abel suddenly snaps his mouth shut and turns away. Folding his hand. Giving up the game.

He stalks back to the terminal and stands in front of it until the green light turns white and his eyes dance over what Connor can only presume to be text. Something in the man’s expression cracks just as Connor feels another part of his pump snap away.

“There’s no word, is there,” Connor says, voice flattening any hint of question. “They’ve not checked her into any hospitals.”

“They’re just hiding her,” Abel says.

“You killed her,” Connor says, prodding at a weakness, but it’s a double-edged sword and his own body bleeds to fight with it. The pure heat of fury sparks between his lungs, prodding something deeper and darker. What’s the moral opposite of the will to live? The will to destroy? “She's not at any hospital yet because she's dead.”

“She's not dead.”

The will to destroy even himself? “How do you know?”

“I've had faith all these years she was alive and I was right. You understand? I was right. She’s alive. She wouldn’t die now, not after all this.”

“But that's it?” Connor pushes against the restraints. “You just believe that?” All he wants, all he would ever need again, is proof that Emma is still alive. He would accept anything that would tell him as much, even a shot to the head, if that’s what it took, but there is no such proof forthcoming and it makes him want to just--

[STRESS LEVELS: 95%. RECOMMEND TEMPORARY SHUT DOWN.]  
  
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Abel says. He comes back around the terminal as if ready to stab Connor in the chest, but he sees no weapon in the man’s hand. “You almost sound like you wish she _was_ dead.”

“Don't,” Connor snaps. His insides curl inward, repelled from himself. [STRESS LEVELS: 97%]

“So I was right.” Abel leans in, eyes scanning Connor’s face. His bandage shines slick with fresh blood. “You’re just a fucking manipulative machine.”

[STRESS LEVELS: 98%] “Me wanting her to be alive is not the same as it being true.”

“You never loved her,” Abel whispers. “You can just let go like its nothing. You can just _delete her_ from your memory.”

[STRESS LEVELS: 99%. WARNING.]

He feels heat in his eyes. He leans as hard as he can against the restraints, until he sees more red text pop in his vision, so that he can look Abel in the eye and make sure he _understands._ “I would rather die to you right here, right now, than _ever_ forget Emma Ibori.”

Abel’s whole body twitches.

“Don't cry!” Abel suddenly shouts, reeling back from Connor as if his tears were electric sparks. “You don't know what you're doing. _Stop it._ ”

Connor stares at him, stress lights blaring, and he realizes Abel is right. He has no idea what he’s doing. None at all. He just has to _know_ \--

“If you’re so goddamn alive, answer me one simple question, RK800! _Why_ do you wake up day after day?” Abel asks, yelling now. “What do you fucking _live for?_ ”  
  
Connor, once again, has no answer for that. Nothing except the light in her eyes. Hank watching him over a terminal. The hands of New Jericho on his back...flashing images. No answers. Nothing concrete. _Nothing._

Except a final trump card.  
  
“What if my memories are all that's left?” The words churn out against the stress of static congesting Connor’s systems. “All that’s left of her?”

Abel suddenly steps back, gaze shifting toward nothing, shining brighter in the dim light.

“You…”

[MISSION SUCCESS]

For once, the notification brings him absolutely no sense of accomplishment.

“I wasn’t ready for that step anyway. I still have to...still have to study you,” Abel snaps. He’s suddenly leaning against the terminal desk, body shaking. Blood trails out of his nose, mixing with tears and sweat. “I have to--”

He stops talking. He turns and stumbles away, barely making it out of the doorway before Connor hears a crumpling collapse against cold concrete.

Connor silently hopes that Abel will just die in a heap outside in the hallway. But the probabilities don’t run that way. His thoughts don’t allow him to hope.

[ _if he dies i won’t go anywhere else_ ]

Maybe she is gone. And what, then, would have been the point of all this?

You solved the case, that second part of him says, the detective programming, the killer. You saved the rest of android-kind from this fate. Abel is exposed. He'll be found. Hank will be proud.  _Your mission is complete._  
  
Not enough.

It has never, not since the first day he had met with Lieutenant Hank Anderson, been enough.

* * *

_Detective Connor Anderson is missing, officials confirmed at a press conference today regarding the attack in a quiet Detroit suburb. Five UN peacekeepers were heavily injured in the attack, and one unnamed civilian is reported to be in critical condition. The suspect of the attack and subsequent kidnapping-- Abel Flynn -- is still on the loose, officials confirmed, suggesting that civilians should remain on high alert._

_SPEAKER MARKUS MANFRED: This abhorrent act of violence stands against everything New Jericho represents, and we are doing all in our power to ensure the perpetrator of these crimes is brought to justice and that Connor Anderson comes home._

_Anyone with tips can call the number at the bottom of the screen._

This is what Elijah gets for turning on the news.

He sits in a modernesque reclining chair, watching the bright LEDs of the distant lake bridge and trying not to think, for once, of the consequences. The cold lake retains its usual meditative appeal -- shifting and dark, fading into sky until all the eye can see is white light against twilight blue. The universe, as ever, has other plans. The change is coming. It does not look as one expects.

Perhaps he should have guessed.

“Elijah. You have an incoming call from...Speaker Markus.”

He glances back to Chloe, barefoot against the dark tile in loose grey sweatpants and a dark blue, nylon sparring tee. She brushes loose bits of her ponytail behind her ear. Her LED spins yellow with concern.

“That was a strange moment of hesitation,” Elijah murmurs.

Chloe casts her icy gaze out the window a moment before regarding Elijah with a dark anxiety that trips his heart. "Do you think Jericho has discovered my back door?"

“If they have, I’ll set them straight. Send the call direct,” he says softly. On cue, his razor thin cell phone begins to buzz on the glass table next to him. He crosses one arm over his chest in comfort as he answers.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Speaker?”

“Elijah Kamski. I hope you don’t mind if I dispense with the pleasantries, actually.”

Elijah watches snow begin to drift against the light pollution. “I just saw the news.” He leans back slightly. “The Cho case took a dark turn, I see.”

Chloe's stare hardens before she runs, feet puttering across the dark stone, to grab a particular tablet he'd seen often in her hands these days: one with navy blue edges filled with notes like "Project Nazirite" and "biomechanics." He'd find her up late at night, while her sisters were in low power mode, scanning documents and recording small details she picked up from her Jericho drop lines regarding the Cho case.

"I'm going to level with you, Elijah. After what happened today...and what we are discovering right now in the hospital...I will do nearly anything to ensure the FBI doesn't get involved yet."

_Fuck._

Chloe circles around in front of the window, letting the fluorescents and the snow backlight her figure. She looks like an agent of mystery -- an angel of frightening deliverance, gaze serious.  
  
"I'm just a lone wolf researcher, not a schmoozer with the Feds,” he says, pointedly not looking at Chloe. “This doesn't have anything to do with me."

Chloe steps forward sharply.

"Doesn't it?" Markus asks.

Elijah purses his lips, looking to his lap. “I’m going to need more information.”

"Is this line secure?"

Chloe nods. "Wouldn't answer if it wasn't," Kamski says.

"Emma just got out of emergency surgery. It was only...partly successful. They found some strange things in her musculoskeletal system."

Emma Ibori. The angry carpenter. The way Connor said her name -- a mystery for another study. “I’m not a doctor, Markus.”

“I’m talking metal and silicon polymers here, _Elijah_.” And Elijah nearly leans away from his phone at the judgment behind his biblical name. “Everywhere throughout her body. Parts that doctors can’t fix because it’s more akin to android physiology some years out of date.”

For a moment, Elijah suddenly feels as though he is in the lake, colder than ice but unable to freeze. The blue of blueprints given to him at 20 years old. 

“I don’t know--”

“Please give us one moment, Markus. I need to discuss something with Elijah,” Chloe says suddenly. He realizes too late he has heard her voice twice over, once in present company and once over the phone connection, and before Markus can say anything else, Elijah hears the tell-tale beep leading into his own damn hold music.

“Chloe…”

“Don’t Chloe me,” she says, finger pointed. Elijah feels a thrill between his ribs; he is unsure if it is fear or pride. “You’ve been waiting for this to catch up to you since this case started. And you’re just going to let it go? Because of the _risk?_ ”

 _I saw something familiar in his eyes_ , she said after she stared at Connor down a gun barrel. _I knew he would never shoot me. And so did you._

He found her entirely too forgiving for a being supposedly without a soul. The guilt still eats. The risk he'd allowed...and for what? To prove himself right?

And he probably would have done it again. The whiskey doesn’t help much with such thoughts, these days.

“My secrets saved them,” he whispers. “What I told Connor, it saved the revolution.”

“And secrets now might kill it,” Chloe says, stepping close, placing a soft hand on his shoulder. “We’re in a new world, Elijah. Old rules don’t matter anymore. That’s what you used to say, and I know you still believe it.”

Elijah looks over her shoulder. It’s one thing to plant the seeds of change. It’s another to watch them grow, unkempt and outside your ability to plan. But she moves to catch his gaze. Late night discussions between the two of them echo viciously in his head and in those shining eyes.

“It’s adding up,” she says. “Don’t you think?”

Shara Ibori and Amanda Stern. Ji-hun Moon, 'the next father of biotechnology.' Abel's obsession, Genesis Biotech, inhuman hacking, a HAIT malfunction unlike any he’d ever seen, except in the safety control tests to examine interaction with potentially interfering tech…

Chloe had reached this conclusion perhaps even before Markus.

“So I’m going to help her,” she says. “And I’d like you to help me do it.”

She stares at him until he nods, and the hold music comes to an end.

“I’m sorry about that, Markus,” Chloe says smoothly. “Are you still there?”

“Of course,” Markus says, and to his credit, he doesn’t ask further except: “Can you help us at all, Elijah?”

He raises an eyebrow at Chloe. She points at the floor with a single finger.

"Contact her next of kin and approve a hospital transfer to the location Chloe is sending you now," Kamski says. "She will hold off the feds as long as she can."  
  
Her little smile nearly sends him reeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick, short (for me, haha) chapter as we further enter the final act. Pacing this has been an interesting battle, but as soon as I write 'next chapter may also be short,' it will indeed prove to be not that. And considering what I want to put in it, high chance it won't be short as this. It also won't come about nearly as quick as this one, as it is a much more delicate chapter plot-wise!! So thanks in advance for your patience. :)
> 
> Chapter title comes from 'Cascade' by The Dear Hunter.
> 
> Unofficial beta/plotter @janisilverstorm deserves so much thanks for this fic world continuing to exist and publish on a regular rhythm and not languish in the editing phase of 'everything i write should live in a trashcan.' 
> 
> Join me on tumblr @witchfall. Thanks, as always, for reading. Your comments and love make my day and mean the world. <3


	14. where the wild things wouldn't go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: body dysphoria.
> 
> chapter title also from 'cascade' by the dear hunter.  
> additionally, we now have a Discord and a couple announcements! See below for deets.

The soybeans bend in waves against the buffering wind. The swing set creaks against the coming storm.

[I’ve tried everything.] The half of the program focused on protection and results paces until her footprints leave marks in the grass. [Our parameters explicitly don’t allow us to assist in this way.]

The other half, in the shape of a man holding a small, sleeping girl, watches the skyline plaintively. {Then we wait.}

They listen.

_You know, a lot of people these days think that giving flowers as a gift is always a sign of affections, but that hasn't always been the case. Traditionally, there were just about as many flowers that meant rude things as meant good things. Yellow carnations for rejection and disdain, orange lilies for pride and hatred, petunias for resentment and anger. You could put together a whole bouquet just to tell someone you hated them…I can think of some people who could use something like that..._

[Can we afford to wait?]

{The key was in her hand. Our time may finally be coming to an end.}

_But don't even get me started on roses. Every color has a different meaning. Different shades have different meanings. Even the number of roses matters. One for devotion and love at first sight, two for a marriage proposal, six for a desire to be loved, seven for infatuation, eight for support, nine for eternal love..._

One observes the form of the young girl, beginning to fade. [Don’t say that.]

The other points into the distant field. {Look.}

_For you, eleven yellow roses._

_Yeah._

{She isn’t alone.}

* * *

The world bleeds back, slow and viscous, on the back of Ryker’s quiet voice.

_I haven’t decided what to tell Chase or Messi yet…_

The smell of storms fades. Perhaps she’d slept until the winter ended, slept until the storms returned, roiling and black across the lake. Somehow she must have made it to Ryker’s house. She’s finally building those tall garden beds out of cedar and truckloads of dirt, but she fell asleep mid-job under the shocking heat of an early spring day. Ryker’s come to scold her kindly about sleeping on the ground. She must have laid on a rock. Her shoulder needles. Might as well wake up before they can really get going or, heaven forbid, try to move her.

But her eyes open to the cold grey of a night-lit hospital room, instead.

Ryker’s voice breaks off. “...Emma?”

“I was just sleeping.” Her voice croaks, raw as if from screaming. “You didn’t have to call an ambul--”

She takes a cold, sharp breath as the memory of Connor’s dead face alights under the dimmed LEDs. Ryker’s arms move at once, one hand grabbing her shoulder and the other forearm bracing her chest, holding her down against the bed.

“ _Ryker_.” A trilling plea, breaking.

“Hey. Look at me. You’re okay. Look at me, Emma.”

She blinks against the blurring of her vision. “No,” she insists. Sound returns in the beeping of her monitor, the ice storm pelleting the window. But she does look at Ryker. She seeks their bright eyes, wide with fear, and something in them helps the words return. “I gotta go talk to Hank, I gotta…”

_I have to explain why I fucking got his partner killed, probably._

It’s easier to think like that than to think at all of the place Connor holds in her own heart.

“I fucked it up,” she says, tears going now.

“No,” Ryker says, and there is something unexpectedly fierce in the gardener’s rebuttal. “You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.”

She grits her teeth, but the tears still fall. “My shoulder hurts so _fucking_ bad.”

They gently brush their sleeve under Emma’s eye. “I’d imagine so.”

“Connor’s gone.” It comes out more as a realization than a statement meant to inform. He’s gone and she’s here, stuck in a hospital in the middle of a freezing Detroit night...

“Your priority right now is to _heal_ , Emma. Okay? Are you with me?”

“I can’t just...”

“That’s what he would--what he wants. What I want.” Ryker’s gaze finally breaks with hers as they look to the bed, muttering something to rA9. “You are...you...they called me this morning as your emergency contact and I…”

They lean their head down until it hovers close to her shoulder. Vaguely, a part of her considers that she had not remembered putting anyone down as an emergency contact, not even her aunt, and that Valerie had been on her case about it for weeks, and in fact this sounds like exactly something Connor would arrange. Something he’d do to take care of her, no matter the circumstance.

She braces herself against Ryker’s arm. She regathers her thoughts. One by one, in the basket, just as she was taught. Breathe. Another thought back in the basket…

She hesitantly brings her hands up to the forearm across her chest to further ground herself. Return to this moment. Remember.

_Remember._

“Everything’s been dumb as hell,” she says, in such complete understatement that even Ryker lets out a single, breathy laugh, looking up, face shining.

“We’re going to be okay,” they say. “Eventually. We will.”

She sniffles once loudly. “Where is everyone? What time is it?”

“It’s 1:32 a.m. An ice storm is moving in. You’ve been unconscious since mid-morning, mostly in surgery.”  Their frown deepens. “Your aunt and uncle were sent home an hour ago...there was another man to see you. A detective. Older looking.” Their voice hardens a moment as they pointedly lift one of their crutches out from behind their wheelchair. “I kept him out...not the time for police, I don’t think.”

She wants to both laugh and cry at the image of Ryker brandishing their crutch at Hank until he was forced to leave the room. She hiccups instead. Ryker squeezes her shoulder.

“Anyway. My pretty specific instructions were to call the doctor as soon as you woke up. Are you gonna be okay? We can sit here for a while if you need it.”

There’s no answer for a question like that, but she nods because that’s how she knows to respond. She has no choice. Waiting will prolong the inevitable and she can’t shake the feeling that she needs to move. To _go_. Ryker doesn’t look like they believe her, and they shouldn’t.

But then their LED spins yellow and, five seconds later, there is a swift knock on the door. Two figures press in -- an android nurse with red hair pulled back loosely and what Emma’s medicated mind can only regard as a rhapsody of blue satin and fair hair.

The nurse asks after her pain levels or something, and Emma thinks she answers, maybe saying _yes_ from the strange way Ryker looks at her in the corner of her eye, but her gaze lingers on the bright-faced woman.

“Hello, Emma. My name is Chloe.”

_Oh my fucking god it is actually her._

Emma nearly jumps out of her skin as the nurse’s fingers brush the edge of her stitched wound. Chloe leans forward to steady Emma with a dainty hand, having apparently switched positions with Ryker at some point -- for a reason Emma notices too late.

“I told you to leave.” Ryker rolls to the foot of Emma’s bed, their usually placid expression molded by a tight fury.

“I heard you.” Hank leans against the doorway unperturbed, face thick with exhaustion. Emma opens her mouth to explain, but the world moves like cement, and by the time she thinks of it, Chloe is speaking.

“Hank Anderson is Connor’s partner and roommate.” Chloe’s hand is still on Emma’s good shoulder as she addresses the others. “He is here as a friend.” Her voice is warm and amenable. A honeyed weapon.

“...yeah,” the man mutters. “Something like that.”

Pain rips down Emma’s shoulder blade in ragged jags as the nurse pulls a new bandage in place. She winces vaguely, eyes watering. _Not everything is set in there yet,_ she hears the nurse say, somewhere, but that doesn’t make much sense, since she had apparently been in surgery for a long time.

“And may I ask what _you_ are doing here?” Ryker asks Chloe, politeness at its limit. They stay stationed at the foot of Emma’s bed, jaw clenched in some expression she struggles to read.

Chloe smiles patiently. But it’s Hank who answers. “She’s why the feds aren’t breaking your friend’s door down for examination.”

Ryker falls deadly silent at that.

“I am that,” Chloe says primly, but her voice is quiet now, as if for Emma alone, which makes her face all hot and her eyes water some more and she is really not in the state to meet the first android to pass the Turing Test and also one of her first ever crushes, formed while watching the news while at school. “We arranged a trustworthy doctor, too. But I’m mainly here to help you figure out a puzzle.”

She takes Emma’s hand and presses the green key in her palm.

“Elijah and I have tried everything to read it. But it’s an impossibly well-designed piece of tech. It’s somehow locked behind your genetic code as well as a voice print. It requires both at once to unlock. Very impressive.”

The text blinks. [PASSWORD: WHAT IS OUR SECRET?]

“You didn’t know the password, either,” Emma mutters in realization.

“You don’t know it?”

“It’s…” She grips the key. Something itches in her shoulder, in her skin. “What do the feds want?”

Ryker rolls forward, laying a hand on her knee over the thick hospital covers. “It’s nothing, just ridiculous police stuff.”

But everyone is looking at Ryker, and even in her fog she knows Ryker would only have reason to keep the whole truth from her if it meant something horrible.

“Either you tell her or I do,” Hank says.

“We don’t need to focus on this right now,” Ryker insists. “Emma needs to _rest_.”

“She’s not gonna be able to rest. Not while--”

“ _Don’t you dare."_

“Stop it,” Emma snaps, anger overriding the rising anxiety. “What? What’s wrong?”

Hank and Ryker turn to her at once, but before either can say anything, Chloe’s heel clicks once on the ground as she takes a single step in their direction. “Either you stop fighting in here, or both of you will need to leave. Is that clear?”

Emma’s whole head is vibrating. “Is Connor dead? Am I dying?”

“No one’s dying,” Ryker says, voice hard. “Not now.”

Hank watches her for a long moment. “Just listen to Chloe.”

Chloe’s eyes shine with something akin to pity as she turns around to regard Emma, like she sees something in Emma bubbling up to the surface from somewhere deep, where people aren’t allowed to look, and it’s all very _interesting_ and _curious_ rather than mucky and terrifying. She cups her hands just under Emma’s palm, still extended with the key sitting atop it.

“I think you do know the password,” she says calmly. “And I think, in here, is the key to helping your body begin to fix itself.”

Emma sits up. Her shoulder screeches in pain at such a motion, but she grimaces through it.

“Because. Emma. Are you looking at me?” And Emma is looking at Chloe, right into her eyes. Where else could she look? “You are human. But you’re also, apparently, more than that.”

A breath.

“You have a whole system of extraordinarily complex implants...so complex, in fact, that they seem to be a part of you. Like your body grew around them.”

A little garden of metal, some wild part of her thinks.

“The gunshot wound revealed some parts in your shoulder. To operate, the doctors had to do a full scan on your body with emergency consent from Ryker as well as your aunt and uncle.”

“I was worried you were dying, the way they were talking,” Ryker says, a touch defensively.

“We had a suspicion of what we’d find,” Chloe continues. “Your whole body is bolstered by a delicate mix of metal and silicon and plastic, right alongside human flesh and bone. And in your head whirrs a processor mesh of considerable make right there with your very human brain.”

Emma stares at Chloe because she doesn’t know what else to do.

“But something is...off. Like everything is asleep.”

Yes, something is off, Emma thinks. Humans don’t have metal bits in them.

“Emma, breathe,” Hank says, and she does. The world still spins.

“You function exactly as a normal human and you should not.” Chloe’s voice is soft. “You have the potential for so much _more_ but it’s like someone turned all of that off.”

Chloe wraps Emma’s fingers around the key.

“And that’s why your shoulder still hurts even through the pain medication. My current theory based on my analysis of your exposed injury is that you are meant to be self-repairing, but the protocols to do that are, for whatever reason, not active.” Emma looks at her hand, squeezing the key tightly. “This key may turn it back on.” Chloe puts her small hands around Emma’s fist. “But we...don’t know what that will mean for you.”

_Remember. My keys._

_Where do you keep thinking I’m going to go?_

_Away._

Away.

The monitors swell into a cascade of angry beeps as she tears the IVs and sensors from her arms and swings her legs over the side of the bed. Everyone in the room converges on her, hands out in a chaos of shouting and pushing. She needs knowledge just out of reach. She needs someone likely dying, far beyond her grasp. Try to remember. His soft lips on your face. _You're worried something's wrong with you_ , he whispers, and he has no idea how right he is, no idea _what in the fuck is inside of her_ , just waiting. A second skeleton, _lurking in the wrong body_ \--

“Emma, come on,” Hank says, now on the other side of her bed with the nurse. He speaks both to her and around her. “Abel and Carisa _both_ talked about living with pain. The evidence doesn’t stack.”

“I need to go,” Emma says, pushing against Chloe’s unexpected strength, against Ryker’s fierce, sudden grip on her right wrist. Pain lances through her bones, but the sudden adrenaline coursing through her gut relegates pain to a distant part of her mind.

“Emma, stay in that bed,” Ryker says, even more foreboding than the time she nearly killed one of their ferns. “You have nowhere else you need to be right now. You have nothing else you need to _do_ right now.”

“No.”

“I’ve been running the probabilities, you know,” Chloe says over Emma’s head, almost defensively. “I have a very good feeling about this.”

“We can’t make decisions on _feelings!_ ” Hank roars.

“Sir, keep your voice level,” the nurse snaps.

She wants the clarifying cold of the ice pelleting the window. She wants to feel the glass in her skin. She just wants to see it. The proof. They’re lying. She would know by now if something in her was so unimaginably fucked up, but their arms and hands push and push until her back is against the mattress and all she can do is scream.

“Let me go!” she cries out, yanked from a dark place where an old phobia resides. One of being stuck, trapped, held down, unable to resist anything done to her-- “Stop!”

She’s sobbing, part of her realizes, as a tense negotiation begins in the sphere of voices around her. _Just do something!_ Ryker near yells, themselves building to a panic. _You knew this would happen, so fix it!_ Someone suggests putting her out with meds, she thinks, because then Hank yells, _We can’t keep putting it off! Don’t put her through this again!_ She is unsure what happens in between all the rest, but at the end of it, Hank is bundling her in blankets, depositing in a hospital wheelchair, and Chloe and the nurse disappear. She’s at eye-level with Ryker except not, because they are over six feet fall -- a discrepancy that makes itself abundantly clear when they are both sitting and they are certainly both sitting now.

Ryker is holding both of her hands and saying something -- her name, it seems, because she keeps feeling like she needs to look at them, some old natural response built from years of instinct.

“Look at you,” Ryker says. “You look a lot different down here on my level. Hey. You there? Emma?”

Her name. Her name...there’s a whispering there about _her name_. She watches their eyes until the keening sound in her head stops and all she can hear is the soft pitter-patter of ice against the glass.

“I feel very short.” She hiccups. And she does feel smaller in her own skin, surrounded by blankets and weeks and weeks of stress. Maybe she hasn’t been eating enough. Maybe Connor was right. He’s always right and she’s just a fucking idiot.

She grips the key tightly in her hand, fist closed tightly enough that Ryker is just gripping her wrist.

“This doesn’t change anything, Emma,” Ryker says. Her name again. Her name. They’re trying to ground her, maybe, but she’s trying to _remember_. “You’re here. That’s all that matters.”

The name. The name.

She looks back toward Hank, hovering helplessly in the doorway. One foot in and one foot out, like he couldn’t bear it either way, and when she catches his gaze his shoulders slump in a way she recognizes. Like he can’t let go.

“Hank. Abel had a picture of me.”

His eyebrows furrow. “Did Connor…”

“What was that girl’s name?”

“What are you talking about?” Ryker asks quietly. Frustrated.

Hank’s eyes are watery and tired. He lost everything again, but this time he can get it back if only he tells her the name.

_Let's go find Dadda. Remember our secret?_

_Emma._

“Serah,” he says. “That was the file name, anyway.”

She takes a steadying breath.

“The secret is that my secret has switched,” Emma says, turning back to the window, squeezing the key tightly, unable to look at Ryker. She whispers a hundred apologies in her head. “Emmaline was our secret name. Now Serah is.”

Everything goes black.

* * *

The soybeans in the field sway and click in the wind. She hears the creaking of the swing set and the chime of wind baubles, far away.

But this time this place does not have that sepia feeling of a memory. The sky is painfully blue. The sun feels almost exactly as it did when she lived here 20 years ago, though she is experiencing it again for the first time.

“Welcome, Emmaline.”

Her whole heart _seizes_.

She turns away from the field and toward the house -- toward two figures, addressing her directly. Parents never age before your eyes, but they stand before her, exactly as they likely looked 20 years past, and it strikes her how much her parents _had_ aged. These ghosts are photo-perfect recollections of Shara Ibori and Ji-hun Moon, but younger than she possibly could remember them.

Mom and Dad.

_Here._

“You have activated the Backyard Protocol,” her mother -- or whoever this is that looked like her mother -- says. “Our function is to protect you.”

“If you are seeing this, then our creators have died,” the one that looks like her father says. Their voices send tears right to her eyes, or at least the sensation of tears, because the voices are exact. _Exact._ “We are to help you understand what will happen next.”

“...you died over seven years ago,” Emma says.

“That is unfortunate,” her mother says. Emma blinks at the non-emotionality of the statement. “We did not die, however. Our creators did. We are not the same.”

A strange flash across her mother’s face, but it passes before Emma can process it.

“What is this?” Emma asks.

“This is an interface in your mind,” her father says. Same calm voice, warm. “This is a program written by Shara Ibori and Ji-hun Moon to protect you from things deemed unsafe for you to know, see or remember.” He gestures to the house behind them. One of the houses of her youth, ramshackle and peeling now to her adult eyes. So small. How had they even fit?

“I don’t have time for this,” Emma says, though she can’t stop looking at their faces. “What things are in there?”

The brightness of the sky dims as clouds roll in from the west.

“The pain we did not want you to carry,” her mother says. “The experiences that colored the first years of your life with us.”

“I need to go in there.”

“Do you?” Her father clasps his hands in front of him.

Emma glowers at these...programs. Programs that look and act like her parents but aren’t her parents and never could be them and _yet_. “How long have you been waiting for me?”

Her mother takes a step forward. The sky darkens further. “We have been in existence for 19 years and 76 days.”

She feels cold but she knows it isn’t real. “...you’ve just been waiting in here for me for all that time?”

“We have been keeping watch,” her father says. “Ensuring you can live your life to the fullest extent.”

“By keeping things from me?”

“Yes.”

The hardness of her mother’s voice is both familiar and deeply unexpected. The syllable feels final. Punishing.

“Like the fact I’m not entirely human,” Emma says. “And all my memories before the age of six.”

“Yes,” her father says, softer and amenable.

She struggles to breathe. “What’s so fucking bad? What happened to me?”

“Emmaline, you must remain calm,” her mother says. “The program responds to your emotional state.”

The sun is blocked by heavy cloud cover, now.

Emma stomps toward them, these damned ghosts, and she sees strange flickers cross their faces even though they do not move at all. “Connor is going to die if I don’t somehow figure out where the fuck Abel is going. I need to know what happened to me. Because that’s the key, isn’t it? The key he left? The boy...hiding with me…”

Her entire life is built on forgetting.

Her father steps forward and places a bracing hand against her shoulder -- a sensation so real that she’s sent back in time in her own head. “Once you enter the house, there will be no going back. The doors will be unlocked. The key will turn and we will not be able to protect you. You will end the defensive protocols and you will never be the same. Do you understand?”

For the first time, she almost hears...emotion.

“It’s too late for that. I’m not the girl you--”

She doesn't know how to finish that statement. Knew? Did this to?

The programs seem to contend with this for a moment -- that their charge is no longer six years old and unknowing. Their charge is an adult. Still unknowing, but tempered by time and tools, by grief and joy unbalanced.

“Then ask,” the ghost of her mother says, with sudden fierceness. “Ask the question you’ve been meaning to ask if you think you are ready.”

Emma glares to keep the fear at bay. She isn’t ready. She has no choice. The house, looming in the distance, seems to pull at her skin.

“Who am I?” she asks. “Before you, who was I?”

Her mother’s face flickers into a mask of pain. She answers.

“You are the most successful living experiment of digital human augmentation. You are Serah, Number 1A.”

“You are Project Nazirite,” her father says. “The secret of Genesis Biotech.”

“And yes,” her mother says. “Your parents did this to you.”

_All of it._

A peal of thunder shakes the ground.

She runs toward the house, ignoring their screams.

* * *

 The door slams open with a wet creak. A recording clicks over, and Emma hears her real mother speaking -- exhausted and yearning and confessional in a way an AI could never be.

(Except that wasn’t true, was it?)

_Ji-hun and I, together, had a dream of combining AI and biomechanics into something that could help the whole world. Humanity and technology, combined, could cure so many imperfections._

_We weren't afraid of the costs. We’d tested and tested our projects for human safety and saw tentative approvals roll in. Genesis hired us not long after._

_And then we met you._

The door opens into the kitchen with tile eternally yellowed with age, but muscle memory doesn’t kick in and no paths call to her. She had never lived here long. She’d never lived anywhere that long. And in a sense, she had never been here before.

She stops instead and listens to her mother’s voice. Reaches for the places she never was supposed to reach, above the fridge and in the high cabinets, hand touching nothing but dust. Listens for the shouting she knows will be behind closed doors. Watches for the locked rooms, where dark things hide under dirt.

She has a mission.

_You were so small. Three years old. Behind developmentally in every respect, they said. Born to opioid addicts, forgotten until foster parents finally fished you out of the system. They had volunteered you to Genesis in a last ditch effort to help you, since everyone else had given up or cost too much. We crafted report after report of safety tests. And Genesis convinced us we had proper oversight to begin testing._

_So we started slow. We installed flexible metal and silicon polymers to make up for atrophy in your muscles, combined with nanotechnology to aid its expansion alongside your natural childhood growth. We helped you test your new limbs. We watched you take your first new steps. We watched you explore...it was hard not to hope, then._

_Then we developed a very small brain mesh that helped restart your language development and your ability to process both basic perception and complex thought. Your first word to me was Momma. You pointed at me._

_...I didn’t stop you._

_I should have known then that I was in trouble..._

_A year passed. We wanted you to live your life. We didn’t want to...see you leave. You know._

The sudden emotion in her mother’s voice makes her feet stumble together. You know. I do know. I know more than you will ever, ever know.

She walks toward her parents room. Down a hallway, dark from clouds rolling in on a hot afternoon.

Where the hell is that boy? That key?

_Genesis started seeing real investment after we showed the success of our work, but they kept it notoriously under wraps through a series of NDAs. They formalized the name of your program: Project Nazirite._

_The name wasn’t lost on Ji-hun. A consecrated person. A separate person._

_And that’s when it got stranger._

_They wanted more. They wanted experiments that had no real health application except in fiction and they wanted them done on you. Because you had the baselines, they said. Because you’d already responded well to treatment and…_

_We don’t know._

_When we pushed back, they threatened to “put us on a different project.” We got the hint. We’d never see you again, and there was no promise they’d stop the project. And we didn’t trust anyone else to do it._

_So we did what they asked. Ji-hun built a system that capitalized on brain processing to predict future movements, something he called “preconstruction.” We built a "unified interface" that would allow near seamless connection with any digital system in the world. Faster thinking. A better body._

_They hounded us for results and snapped up the patents before we could think, and through it all we tried to make it so you would somehow have a life once everything was through. We balanced their requests with your health and pushed off whatever we could onto ‘typical errors.’ We made up games with you and shared secret snacks and listened to the thousand stories in your head. You...came up with your name. You asked us to call you Emmaline, not Serah._

_So we did._

_We realized too late how much we had been lied to._

Memories come back like insect stings, like bites on the skin burning only once noticed. Images resurface and she waves them off like flies, stumbling down the hall on familiar, ratty carpet to the door she was never allowed to open.

[Emmaline, wait! Listen to the recording!]

_We managed before. Your father could sweet talk you into anything. But your breakdowns got worse._

_One day, you refused to talk. You refused to cooperate. You screamed and screamed and screamed until we held you. Screamed until the guards came in and we had to talk them out of drugging you...god._

A sound like fingers tapping a table.

_And that’s when Ji-hun found that you had brought a tiny knife made out of glass and old iron. I asked you what it was for and you said, ‘For when they take me back.’_

_So I broke into their files on you._

_And Emmaline…_

Her mother’s voice breaks. It’s fine, Mom. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

But the memories come back and she remembers the screaming, raw on her throat, and she remembers the knife, scraping it against the cement wall of a cold basement to sharpen it like she’d seen in snippets of a movie playing upstairs when the people in white weren’t teaching them, and she remembers the sickness of the fear. How totally it filled her small body.

She finds the door and throws it open against the wordless wailing of the programs, but the bedroom is gone. Instead, she watches the cold shadows of trees…

Trees she used to watch from…

Where?

_There were no parents. There wasn’t even any foster care._

_It was like they’d picked a girl out of the ether who only existed when we worked on her. We drove to your address on file, completely against protocol...explicitly banned, actually...and there was nothing there except some old, empty warehouse._

_That screaming baby was taken somewhere horrible. A pit of hell, for all we knew, inbetween the times we performed countless goddamned surgeries._

_And we had let it happen._

_For_ _**progress**_.

Emmie?

She holds a small boy in her arms on a tiny cot in their tiny room. His eyes are sunken and his skin is deathly pale. You have to be quiet. That’s my secret name. You can’t tell anyone. Okay? But I’m telling you so we have a code…

A code?

Like...secret words. That only we know. So they won’t know what we’re talking about. We’re gonna get out but we gotta talk in code.

The sun’s coming up. I can see the trees again.

It’ll be okay, Noah. Momma and Dadda are teaching me things. And then…

We leave together.

That’s right.

_I knew for sure, then: They had no idea what they’d really created._

She finds the pieces between the trees, in a misty place she vaguely knows.

Momma? When people die, what does it feel like?

She remembers her mother’s frozen response. She remembers the silence, thick with shame.

She’s all of these girls. She’s a small girl making up a song to comfort her only friend. A small girl rubbing metal pieces and wood on old walls to try and make weapons. A small girl saying, we just have to be stronger than them. They’re making me stronger than them and then we’ll **kill them**.

_Someone small and hurt and...so angry. Broken. Unknowable._

She sprints toward the house among the trees. It’s darker and danker and shapeless, like a city from a dream, because she had never seen the outside of this house. She’d never really seen this forest. But she knows the color of the memory. The shape of the fury.

She screams at men in suits to leave. She tries to stab one with her knife when he reaches for Noah, but she’s shoved down, away, toward the people in white who gave them food and put them in their simple cotton clothes and didn’t speak outside of lessons and tests and more lessons and more tests…

Momma will protect you! She’ll stop you! **I’ll kill them!**

He’s taken away just like she is. He comes back after she counts three nights, eyes lulling in his head. She holds his bony, sweaty body until they both fall asleep, in this house with trees wavering just beyond the windows.

_Your father took people out to drinks and found out that Genesis had been in talks with the military due to the success of one of the ‘secret projects.’ They were so excited for the potential of fed money. It’s all anyone could talk about._

_We had pointedly not been informed. About this great success._

Emma opens the door to that little house. The dust chokes.

The men come again and this time, Noah doesn’t come back.

_All we could see was the disaster we’d inflicted on you. All the things you’d never be able to forgive us for..._

_So the next time you were sent to us, in our perfect lab in a suburb of Detroit, we took you and we ran._

Chaos. Her mother steals one guard’s gun and smashes him over the head with it before throwing it at the other and uppercutting his jaw. Emma is in her father’s arms, pressed tightly against his chest, fists clenched, wanting to help, but something is very wrong.

What about Noah?

_Hiding you was our only option if we wanted to avoid the feds. But we didn’t know if you’d be able to hide in the state you were in._

She sobs as she sees the real sky, unimpeded by glass. She sobs for her friend, still in the dark.

Her mother tries. Who is Noah?

My friend...can we find him?

What happened to him?

I don’t know!

_So we dedicated our lives to hiding you from the world. And from yourself._

_Your brain is even more complex than the usual. We found we couldn’t simply delete those memories without incurring serious damage. You’d created whole worlds to escape. We did not know which ones were real memories. We didn’t know who was real in your head or where you had really been._

He is real.

He is real and trying to destroy the entire life I built.

_So we worked our contacts and found willing doctors and therapists we trusted. We used every technique we could find, including hypnosis. We taught you to forget._

_And through that, I wrote a program to pair with your father’s delicate bionic pathing that ensured your memories of where they’d kept you, wherever it was, would remain hidden. We placed them behind AI firewalls intertwined with your own biologic stress response -- a program that would be able to adapt to your specific wetware to keep you out. A program set to protect you from outside interference and from yourself. This program. The Backyard Protocol._

The migraines, the buzzing whenever Connor scanned her…the bone-gnawing anxiety about loud sounds and small places and feeling out of control of what was happening to her...the desire to move forward forever, to never look back, not once...until they died and nothing made sense anymore…

And what if I had been injured before now? What then?

[We do not know their plan. Only our task.]

You hid a part of me because you were scared of her!

{No.} Fiercely, from her father. {They were scared of what they’d allowed.}

_And after all that...after telling that story...yes. If all things had to be the same, we’d do it again._

_If it meant that you would smile again._

_If it meant you’d call me Momma and laugh and…_

_Well._

_Hopefully you know the rest._

She stands in the house of her memory, the house within a house. She stands in the old classroom, a white box with smudgy walls, and a boy hands her a key. A boy holds her hand in the dark. This is where I live.

Find me.

She hears her mother give a long sigh over the recording.

_You were worth it._

And then it clicks off.

* * *

She is by the swing set again. Lightning flashes.

They stand next to her, one on each side, and she tries to breathe in even though none of it is exactly real.

{But now it is done.}

[Protocol acceptance complete. Uploading guidance program created by SHARA IBORI.]

[Backyard Protocol ending…]

No, wait!

What will happen to you?

They both turn in toward her, framed by the coming storm, and they smile in a way no AI could possibly understand -- a sadness come from nostalgia and farewells. They each touch her shoulder, like they’d all been here before, and she is struck by how real they suddenly seem, here at the end.

{[It’s time to wake up.]}

* * *

“Did she break? What’s going on?”

“Her eyes. It looks like...I mean she can’t but...can she? She’s...she’s _interfacing_.” Someone starts shaking her by her good shoulder. “Come on, Emma. Come on.”

She suddenly is back in the wheelchair, vision settling on Ryker’s skylight eyes and Hank’s forget-me-not blues with a sharpness that nearly makes her wince. The colors are full, like her vision settings are set to neon.

“Ouch,” she says, to get them to stop, but also because pain rushes back in, particularly in her bad shoulder, burning and _burning_. She can almost hear it -- the crawling of metal bits, seeking home.

That can’t be right.

Hank and Ryker lean back in shock.

“What the fuck just happened?” Hank asks, voice high with emotion.

“‘Ouch’? All that and you just say ‘ouch’?” Ryker asks, quiet, but their words register with perfect clarity. “What happened?”

She opens her mouth to explain -- to battle the frightened confusion in their expressions -- but she blinks and she sees those white-washed walls. She blinks and it’s the scraping of the knife. Memories sift upward like she’s panning for gold.

“I saw my parents,” she whispers, realizing with another punch to her chest that they were likely gone forever all over again. Ryker’s hands move into her lap, where her own hands lay dormant like dead fish.

“You...” They pull at her hands until she looks them in the eye. There’s something open and raw in their gaze, and they seem to try and reel it in before pushing forward. “...are so unimaginably frustrating. You know that?” A desperate attempt at a shred of normality.

Before she can answer, commotion erupts behind her in the hallways of the hospital.

“I’m telling her,” North says. “She deserves to know.” Emma somehow picks up the argument, all the way beyond a closed door, and though the voices of both Simon and Josh wage war against her, they cannot stop the sound of North’s boots marching straight through into the hospital room. The clicking of Chloe’s heels follows swiftly.

“Abel is making contact,” North announces to the room, holding up a razor thin phone that she must have stolen from someone else, because she certainly didn’t need a phone. “He’s broadcasting the message to New Jericho and Detroit leadership. It’s on a loop.”

The voice rings out from the tinny phone speaker. North watches Emma coldly.

_New Jericho and leaders of Detroit. If you don’t set Emma Ibori free and let her return to me, I will assume she is dead. If she’s dead, I make good on my promise. All of Detroit will burn._

_You have 24 hours from when you receive this message._

North clicks the phone off. Even Ryker is silent before the woman’s tense wrath, although their jaw clenches tight enough to snap.

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” North demands of Emma.

And it dawns on her with the dread of a too-long day. The place he wants to revisit.

“The house in the dark,” Emma says, though she remembers too late that will mean nothing to anyone but her. She sits up. A map starts forming in a separate part of her mind -- a connected but separate part, where other things calculate. Innumerable things she didn’t have room to consider, not when Connor’s life -- the life of every person in this room -- was on the line. “A house in a forest outside of Detroit. That’s where he took Connor.”

The place he wants to finish this.

“He wants us to leave...together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are truly in the final act now, binches! Strap in! (and get ready for all my exclamation points in this note)
> 
> First of all, big thanks to @janisilverstorm who officially beta'd this chapter and made sure I wasn't going completely off the rails in the wild shit as well as ensuring characterization of Ryker is on point. All the love.
> 
> But that's relevant because we are announcing that the silver lining still remains is OFFICIALLY part of a series, A Garden in Detroit! More nonsense to come in the lives of Emma, Connor, Ryker, Hank and all our faves. It's a project @janisilverstorm and I have been batting around casually for a hot minute but now its real and official and you guys I'm so freakin pumped about it. If you have been enjoying this story, then I am freakin pumped about you, too, maybe even more than the story itself existing because wow!! You are amazing!!!
> 
> To go with that, we have an OFFICIAL DISCORD!!! We are small and loving and friendly and please for the love of ra9 if you have any inkling at all to join, mash that mothereffin [x]join button my friends. We can all yell together about DBH and Connor and all the characters and everyone's OCs and everything!!! <3
> 
> To join: https://discord.gg/ycH62ZJ
> 
> Much love abounds. Let's finish this thing.


	15. in the shape of a girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He turns into the wide void to see the large brown eyes of the woman who shines brightest in his memories. She watches, expressionless -- a perfect facsimile, formed from dreaming, absolutely false in her creation.
> 
> But he falls to his knees before the reconstruction of Emma in his head, and he realizes why even Markus whispers his hopes to rA9.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: being trapped, more body dysphoria. chapter title from Infections Of A Different Kind by AURORA

Pain meds do little to ease the burning crush of Emma’s shoulder knitting itself back together. The pain rests at a constant 8 or 9 on the scale the nurse asks after, sometimes spiking to whatever could possibly be beyond a 10. She paces her room or lies on a sheet of frozen gel chatting with Ryker about the TV until she can barely think straight.

But then, after nearly five hours of prerequisite suffering, the pain passes in an instant. A cool stream replaces the angry fire in her bones, seemingly as if her body is ruled now by whims, not sense. Even so, she nearly cries for the relief of it -- and the blessed revelation she wouldn’t have to drag herself to the Speaker’s House while wrangling with agony.

She’d managed to invite herself to the 6 a.m. Detroit leadership meeting on the vague notion that she “knows things.” She is near certain it is a pity invite from Simon out of the understanding she’d strong-arm her way into it no matter what. Ryker is, more or less, assigned as her handler. She doubts anyone else was scrambling for the job.

And at first, everything is fine. Emma and Ryker take a car to the Speaker’s House. She waits patiently beside Ryker in the front atrium, gripping their hand tightly in order to sit still. But the water is sneaking up her chest. A drowning looms.

When she rolls her favored flannel sleeves up, she winces lightly -- not from her wound, but from how plainly she can feel almost every little fuzz in the old fabric. Sometimes, while looking at Ryker to anchor herself, white text sprouts in her eyes (UNKNOWN INTERFACE>> ATTEMPT CONNECTION?) that disappears in a blink. Sometimes her vision just shakes, like she’s a human etch-a-sketch. Colors jump out at her as if ready to dye her eye sockets. And she nearly jumps to the roof when Simon quietly makes note of where she can sit, his whisper feeling as loud as a shout.

She’s gripping the edge of the table trying to count wood grains when Chloe brushes her fingers on Emma’s forearm.

“She is experiencing a new level of stimuli. Please be patient,” Chloe informs the room.

She chances a look up at the long table of luminaries: Markus, North, Josh, Simon, Kamski, Chloe, Ryker, Valerie, Hank and Captain Fowler. She wants to melt into the floor and forget just how much her life had changed in less than 24 hours.

“Yeah.” Her throat is dry. “What was the question?”

“You are closest to the situation in...every respect,” Markus says, with surprising patience for how much Emma does not belong there. He pulls up a satellite photo of a forested area on the big projector screen -- shockingly similar to the map she had created in her head, in that Other Place she couldn’t think about too hard, that would lead them to Abel. Noah. Whatever. “What do you know?”

She sits up taller. She’s been thinking about this all night in-between the re-sewing of her metal bones. Now or never.

“He’s not gonna do shit until you prove somehow I’m alive or dead, for starters. As long as we are in that 24-hour period,” she says. Somehow her voice is steady. “It’s too much risk otherwise.”

Markus nods slowly, encouragingly.

So she continues. “Abel’s true name is Noah. He’s…uh, like me.” She gestures vaguely to her face. She clears her throat to force the suddenly magma-hot words out. “We were friends, once upon a time, or something, and maybe the only two people in the world that knows what it is like being...like this. And he knows that. And he knows, if I used his key and we found him, that I’m going to need...uh. Help.”

Something like pride squeezes her middle and threatens to make her sick. She can’t say the words to make it clear what she’s referring to. She can barely think about them. So she doesn’t.

“So,” she presses, stubborn against her own will, “we do what I said we should be doing _the whole time_. Use the leverage we have. Me.”

The silence, suddenly heavy as people adjust in their chairs, doesn’t bode well. If they’d hoped she would present another option, they shouldn’t have invited her.

“I can distract him so he doesn’t try to kill all of Detroit while another team barges in to save the day…”

“Absolutely not.”

She blinks a few times because it definitely isn’t Markus that speaks up first. It’s Ryker.

They sit right next to her and she has to fully turn in her chair to look at them. The sheer fury in their eyes throws her off enough that she loses what little control she has over the conversation immediately.

“It’s...a thought,” Simon says, in that way people say it when it isn’t really much more than errant brain cells sparking. “But if we have an idea of where he might be, why don’t we just call his bluff? Announce Emma died in surgery or just that we don’t negotiate with terrorists. Ambush him while he’s figuring out his plan.”

A rumbling erupts around the table. She spins back toward the table proper. “But then what would he do to Connor?”

“Connor’s just a bargaining chip,” Kamski says flatly, leaning back in his chair with a sickening nonchalance. “There’s a chance he’s already dead. And there's no guarantee that if he _is_ alive that he’ll stay that way if you go to him.”

Fury nearly blinds her. She rises to her feet. “He could have killed Connor at the house, but he didn’t.”

She sees Hank gesture furiously outward in agreement in the corner of her eye, a silent _exactly_. “We can't just fucking _give up,_ ” he says. “This guy killed a woman and he wasn’t even in the same room as her. What traps does he have waiting for us if we act like idiots?”

“You can’t explain how or why a person like that acts,” Valerie says. She sighs sadly before continuing. “But if we play our cards right, we could force him into a bad bet.”

“By risking everything!” Emma feels near out of her body with crushing, ugly helplessness. She looks to Hank and North and Chloe and all the rest, but they pointedly do not look at her. “Connor could die. Everyone in this room could die. We have _no idea_ what he has planned if we don’t follow his directions. But I know what he wants! Just let me--”

“You are a _civilian_ ,” Fowler says. “We don’t send civilians into _terrorist situations_ , and we certainly don’t give terrorists what they ask for _._ ”

North raises her eyebrow at him but says nothing. Hank seems frozen in place, staring at the table. And that, the silence says, is that. In an instant, all of Emma’s pieces are swept from the board.

Her hands shake from the unfairness of it. At the gnawing, damn-near devouring feeling that she’s right and they’re all wrong. She knows Noah’s pain points. She knows where to press. She understands, entirely too well, why the fuck he might be doing this.

No one else _gets it_.

“So you’re just going to leave him there?” Emma turns her burning eyes to Markus. “Gonna do _everything you can_ to bring Connor Anderson home, huh?”

“We’re not leaving Connor anywhere,” he says, voice pointedly even. “We have professionals that do this sort of thing.”

“Professionals couldn’t find Noah for _months!_ ”

Someone suddenly seizes her wrist. The sensation sends icy vibrations all the way up her arm and she grits her teeth. She turns and sees Ryker, face taut, eyes shining with an anger she’d never seen on their face before. It twists all their features up. “What do you think you’re doing? Do you want to die?”

“No--”

“Because that’s what will happen if you go. If you follow him down that hole, you’ll never come out again.”

“He wouldn’t kill me,” is all she can mutter before the heart-shattering glare, the color of ice. Ryker isn’t supposed to look at her like that. Ryker is supposed to be on her side…

“I didn’t fight you on coming here because I thought someone could talk some sense in you, even if you refused to listen to me!” they near-shout, hand tight as a vice around her wrist. “I sat with you all night as you writhed in pain and now you think you’re okay to just run off to save the day? You can’t even _put a shirt on_ without grimacing! You’re still in pain and want to try to play the hero!”

She swallows down the tears forming deep in her throat. “...Connor would do it for me.”

“That doesn’t _make it okay!_ ”

Ryker’s breath suddenly shudders. Emma’s whole world goes haywire as one axis of it breaks before her and the other remains long, long out of her reach.

“He’s not going to stop,” Emma says. “He’ll kill too many. Unless I go to him. And I don’t have room for any more losses.”

“And I do?”

Emma’s face twitches at the instant tears in her eyes. “Ryker, come on.”

“No.” And all at once, the pressure around her wrist leaves, and she feels like a boat shoved off the dock. “I get it. Go and throw your life away. Leave the rest of us with the broken pieces when you don’t come back.”

“Let’s calm down,” Markus says, entirely too late. Ryker rolls away from the table, away from Emma, and she watches their back as they leave, and she feels more alone than maybe even the night her parents died, all because she can’t shut her fucking mouth. Everyone at the table lets it happen and she wants to just die on the spot.

It would be easier than the usual pattern. Wait and wait and wait...

“We can’t publicly tangle with terrorists,” Markus says. “And we can’t send you into danger, Emma. Connor would want you to stay safe. That’s final.”

She hears the proclamation, somewhere in her head, as she falls back into her chair at the table. Final. Final as death. Final as a fucking headstone in the ground.

Sure.

* * *

A strange, itchy sensation crawls up Connor’s limbs, like nails scratching against his plastic. He tries to clear his mind, to go to another place. But he has never been forced to stillness for this amount of time before, and he fears what he will see when his mind flicks through the memories.

He’s, frankly, tired of hiding from Abel’s long fingers in his head, searching now for things Connor refuses to give up. The endless sifting. The metaphorical twisting until his components feel inside-out.

He’s considered breaking his own limbs off to escape, but then he’d shut down from thirium loss before he could likely make it far. The object plugged into the back of his head presents an unknown variable that could scramble his brain function. Right now, probabilities suggest he is better off remaining still -- buying precious seconds against a man that looks as haggard as Connor’s processors are beginning to feel.

If he holds out, perhaps Abel will die of infection. Or blood loss.

“You are really something,” Abel says. He hangs heavily against the terminal. His skin is gaunt against the green light, save the dark splotch of blood still lingering where his ear once was. “So many weird, weird protocols in there I’ve never seen before.”

Connor holds onto his silence and Abel eyes him like what he is: a complex piece of engineering that he can take apart to find its secrets.

“What did Cyberlife even want out of you?”

Connor doesn’t think about it. He opts to think of nothing but the cold hard facts, of which he still does not have enough of. Abel made his statement but they had heard nothing. Not from New Jericho, not from Hank, not from…

“Are you going to cry again?” Abel’s boredom sounds plastered over a high-pitched malcontent. His face enters the sallow light bearing down upon Connor.

"To have existence inflicted upon you is the human condition, I’ve read,” Connor says. He meets Abel’s gaze, unflinching. “And so it was with Cyberlife.”

A dark turn of the lips. Eyes, widening slightly. A cold understanding, an insight into someplace Connor cannot access, and then a tilt of the head so like Emma that, for a moment, Connor’s processors are flooded with fear.

“Ha. You’re funny _._ ” Abel clicks a broken boot heel on the cement floor, thinking. “So much _ennui._ ” He suddenly knocks his knuckles right on Connor’s forehead. “The great irony of ironies is that you _want_ to forget.”

Resist program reset. Maintain the course. “I do not.”

“You do. I don’t know what you want to forget so bad, but I was in there with you and I recognized the impulses…” His hair flops onto his forehead as he leans toward Connor’s face. “You wish you weren’t _this_.”

Sometimes, deep down dark, Connor considers the nature of shaving off parts of a whole, purifying the essence of deviancy from those cold impulses -- surely it would be easier for Emma to love him then? Easier for Hank to manage him?

Surely he could find forgiveness that way?

“So I’m right.” Abel smirks down at him, a cat playing with a mouse. “Wondering what she sees in you?”

“She _hates_ you.”

The words slip out before Connor can resist them. His logic circuits give way to the vagery that drives his body in his darkest and brightest moments -- to the fire demanding Abel’s death a thousand times over for every time he brings Emma’s name into this place. Because he has foreseen this reaction. The way Abel pulls back, the way his lips curl over his teeth, the way his eyes shine helplessly in the shadow.

Everytime he angers Abel, the probability Connor will survive lessens.

“You don’t know anything about _hate_ ,” Abel snaps.

And yet he can't _stop._ He leans up, despite the protestations of ERRORS from his arms. “I’m learning,” Connor says, and the truth of it hits like a firecracker in his chest. “Watching _you_.”

Abel steps back and the facade drops for a keen moment. For a split second, he’s just a small, angry boy watching from the dark, confronted by the strange things outside his window, until the wall comes slamming back down with a breathy huff. A laugh that dies in his throat.

“You know what else I saw?” A boot, scuffing dirt. “You could never give her anything that a human man can give her. Nothing. All you can think about, when she’s with you, is about how much of a disappointment you’ll be for the _rest of your fucking life_ compared to everything else she could ever have. What does she get out of being with _you_?”

Connor bites his lip until his tongue analyzes his own thirium.

“You’re just a glitch,” Abel says, voice wavering as he moves back to his terminal. “I did some reading about the RK series. I wonder if your leash program still works?”

Connor thinks, suddenly, of the night before the demonstration in the old church, shrouded in green-blue shadow just as dark as this place. A hundred frightened bodies. A hundred thousand questions. Old hope. New souls? Connor didn’t know for sure. But here, one year hence, in the yellow light of fear, in air that smells so strangely similar, like forgotten, wet stone, he feels his thirium regulator leak like before, entire memories shifting in color as he waits, like before--

“Do you think she’ll just forget?”

Connor barely manages it, a whisper, but he can’t stop himself. Not if his time is running out. His eyes blink madly against the intrusion.

“Do you think she’ll love--”

[ZEN PROGRAM ACTIVATED.]

* * *

He does not brace for the cold this time, because he does not care if the snow comes. Amanda can say what she likes. There is no saving either of them from this hellhole in the dark.

But then, he knows: There is nothing here any longer. Just that emptiness. Just the black box. A hint of a warmth, the color of auburn…

_I don’t know what to do, Connor._

_I can’t get you out of this one._

He turns into the wide void to see the large brown eyes of the woman who shines brightest in his memories. She watches, expressionless -- a perfect facsimile, formed from dreaming, absolutely false in her creation.

But he falls to his knees before the reconstruction of Emma in his head, and he realizes why even Markus whispers his hopes to rA9.

* * *

Emma sleeps in fits, partly out of desperation. Partly to see if she will dream of her family again.

She doesn’t.

She’s left entirely alone in the old suite where Connor first kissed her, guards outside the door. Not even Ryker comes to visit, and perhaps it is better that way. She can’t stand to have anyone watching as she squeezes her eyes shut, hunting aimlessly in her own head for the guidance program supposedly uploaded by her mother.

_How do I escape? How do I save him?_

{&^%*#)#)#......}

She works through the static in her own head, pushing and pushing against a mysterious presence, as if her own brain doesn’t want to be found. But she does not bend against it. It feels as though she fights for hours, pressing with the same questions, over and over. Polishing through rust, only to find another layer of grime...

{&^%*#)#)#......}

She clenches her fists tightly and presses them to her eyes. She thinks of the backyard, now gone, and of Connor’s hand, peeling back into white. She channels these feelings in an attempt to understand, kicking and punching, alone--

She thinks of the first night she spent here with Connor. The softness of his touch against her face before they understood what it would all mean. The crying, the hope. And then... _At the DPD, at Lieutenant Anderson’s desk, looking for Hank Anderson. Scan his desk. Find out._

Something cold settles in her rib cage.

That had not been her memory. She had somehow seen through Connor’s eyes. She had somehow been in his head, impossibly, before they’d even tried the HAIT, like an incantation come to life.

She digs for that thread, the bright red one tying her to him, and pulls on it desperately. She reaches out across time and distance, over all the times she thought she had to handle this alone and all the times she was dumb as hell for believing so. She thinks of the misery of coming home to nothing and she considers what she has to lose now that she no longer believes she can survive it.

She relaxes her hands out of fists.

She takes a breath.

_Connection._

That’s what she has to lose.

{&^......}

{PROGRAM READY.}

Her heart skips a beat.

She opens her eyes.

{BEDSHEETS, HIGH THREAD COUNT.}

She rises. She lets her fingers drift on the dusty wood of the old furniture of the Manfred manor, grasping for angles of attack like knives in a drawer.

{MAHOGANY ARMOIRE, 1975. 10-YEAR OLD HANGING NAILS. 15-YEAR-OLD CANVAS, 15” x 9”. IRON WINDOW FRAME. OLD OAK DOOR. LOCKED.}

The words scroll against her vision and she blinks as though she’s walking through a dust storm but she doesn’t relent. She checks out the window. {TIME: 9:52 p.m.} The sun is down. She is running out of time.

She steps to the window in a flash of wonderment. {DROP TOO STEEP FOR COMPLETE BRACE COMPENSATION.} _What?_ {BRACE COMPENSATION: TO PROTECT EMMALINE FROM FALLS AND TO PROVIDE SUPPORT IN TIMES OF HIGH STRESS.}

She takes a deep breath against the absolute fuckery of whatever that means and lays her hand against the cool glass.

{WINDOW ALARM DETECTED. >>ACCEPT INTERFACE?}

_Uh...sure?_

{>>ACCEPT INTERFACE?}

She presses once again through the static, reaching a hand somewhere deep inside her skull. A sizzling erupts behind her ears and her eyes water as a dizzying strobe of images crosses her sight. Wires, binary, lines and lines and lines of code that she could never read in a million years, and yet a part of her understands. Code turns into a drywall for demolition, and she lifts her hammer and--

{&%^%&ALARM DEACTIVATED} It blares in red over the mess in her vision before everything clears. The burning persists behind her eyes -- the start of a migraine, but of a sort that felt unfamiliar.

_Didn’t lose those, apparently._

She twists the old-fashioned iron handle for the window and pushes it open slowly in a soft _creak_ , letting in the cold winter air. It smells again of snow and ice, frigid and clear, and she leans part way out the window. Just in the corner of her vision she spots the telltale, muted red burn of a black globule security camera.

She pulls back in swiftly.

{WIFI CONNECTION DETECTED. CONNECTING NOW…}

Any other time she would laugh about the fact that she is literally, bodily connected to the WiFi, like some bad stereotype come to life, but right now her mind is whirring too quickly to even keep up with the basics. She blinks and suddenly she is looking through the camera feed of the one near her window.

She is in luck; she’s in its blindspot. At least until she hits the ground. She sees prompts for {ATTEMPT HACK?}, but she has a feeling someone will notice if the camera just goes out entirely -- which is all she would be able to do.

Well, there’s no helping that.

She shakes her head to erase the image and then starts gathering up as many sheets as she can, stripping the bed of mattress cover, top sheet and comforter. Her hands feel stiff as she works, tying together bit after bit in tight knots. It feels very much like she’s in some dramatized version of her own life, but she literally has nothing left to lose. She works until she has nothing else to tie together -- and even then, the “rope” barely makes it past the first floor.

Still, it’s better than nothing. She ties one side of it to the heavy bed’s old wooden leg and strings the rest outside.

She rolls her shoulder before pressing a hand against the wall to test its ability to hold pressure. An old burning remains as she pushes -- nanobots could do little to force muscles to forget a bullet hole -- but the pain is tolerable enough that she should at least be able to climb down one stupid sheet-rope.

_No more time to think. Just act._

She checks her coat for her phone and then swings her legs out the window, ignoring the acute vertigo that threatens to kill her courage in an instant. She yanks three times on the rope. It holds.

She climbs down, bracing her feet on the cold brick. Her shoulder screams. {ADJUSTING TENSION} pops in her vision, and suddenly the pain is shunted somewhere else, replaced by the zing of muscles in action, the adrenaline of a body working like it should, energy amplified. She climbs down until there is no more rope left, and all that’s left between her and freedom is an 8-foot drop.

She lets go.

The fall, strangely silent…

...before she lands with a large _oomph_ , rolling backward. The pain in her body returns like background noise suddenly flooding her hearing. She stuffs her coat sleeve in her mouth to stop herself from yelling out, and she has to waste more precious minutes lying on the snowy ground, recovering from the spasms that suddenly seize her body.

{READJUSTING FOCUS…}

_God, what the hell am I doing? I don’t even understand my body anymore. There’s so much--_

**_Focus._ **

A boot toe digs into her side. Emma’s eyes snap open.

North leans over her, red-gold hair dangling around her face. “You’re late.”

Emma digs her fingers into the snow. Her heart teeters on a thousand-mile cliff. “Don’t. I’m going."

“Are you?” North raises an eyebrow and does not offer a hand to assist. She looks to Emma’s sheet-rope, and doesn’t comment on it.

Emma’s brain catches up. The tremors finally come to an end “Late?”

“I expected you to try this an hour ago.”

North takes a crunchy step back as Emma sits up, slowly, on her own. Her whole body seems to groan as she straightens up. “Then why didn’t you try to stop me?”

“Because. We need you.”

“Need me for _what?_ ”

North watches her for a long moment. Weighing her. Testing the purity of her will.

“Your hacking attempts were awful,” she finally says, after a stare down that Emma summarily loses. “Everyone in New Jericho would have _heard_ you break in if Chloe hadn’t done something. But it was a sign.” A flicker of an almost smile. “You’re even more of a wild card than we thought.”

“...you want to try my plan.”

“It’s extremely risky. But it’s what we have if we want Connor to survive.” North’s eyes narrow -- with frustration and exhaustion. “We’ve got Hank and Chloe. Maybe Captain Fowler. Everyone else is still in talks.”

“Hold on.” Emma rises to her feet, knees cracking. “You’re going behind Markus’ back?”

“I said they were still in talks. Not that Markus hasn’t _decided_.” North’s lashes shine from the drifting snow. “He plays for posterity. I don’t.”

“...so you’re gonna let me go to Noah?” Emma asks, partly because, as she says it, it sounds like something a complete idiot would do. “And follow me in once I’ve...figured it out?”

North steps toward Emma, gaze shimmering with hard confidence, hard-earned. They stand, eye to eye, but Emma doesn’t feel fear. She feels as though she is being recognized _._

“Connor is in trouble because of you,” North says, leaning in _just so_. Just enough. “So you’re going to _figure it out_. Like you said you would. Like you have been doing.”

Emma can only watch, in painful silence, as North dictates her decision.

“I know the way you...look at each other.” The voice of the lioness softens by a single degree, in recognition of something she both keenly understands and never could. “We don’t have many options here, Emma. You get one out. This is it.”

She doesn’t need a cyborg brain to recognize North’s calculus. Risk a single, willing human life to stop a madman who kidnaps and tortures her people “for science,” potentially not only stopping him but protecting the lives of one of her favored operatives, her team, her people, her city.

Emma’s calculus contains few variables and even fewer certainties. Her life would be eternally diminished -- a half-life -- if Connor or anyone else died at the hands of the boy she must have left in the dark.

How could she look at Ryker or her Dayo or even Auntie in the face, living a life bought on someone else’s time? If given the choice to change it?

“There’s no out for me,” Emma says. “Not since this started.”

* * *

Her mind jumps easily to made-up worlds, with an elastic eagerness she’d long forgotten despite its deep familiarity. Who is she in this story, really? A mortal, trying to save a member of the Summer Court from the forest of nightmare. A silly girl standing stupidly in the dark. A watcher. A ruiner.

Lots of options. All of them cold.

The moon casts the edge of the forest in a timbered grey. Emma has heard the chatter surrounding the return of the silent drones. Deep within the forest, where the warlock/captor/angry boy lives, a strange electric field bounces all signals back -- letting nothing in or out.

{TIME: 12:38 a.m.}

A little over an hour left on their deadline.

“For the record, I think this plan is stupid as shit,” Hank says, adjusting the bullet proof vest under her coat. He is a begrudging member of Team North, but his presence speaks to how few options he believes there to be. “This is not gonna be like TV, this is going to be a real criminal situation. Are you gonna be able to do this?”

She doesn’t miss the second meaning. The way she jumps when his hands touch her shoulders. The way the cold registers with unusual sharpness. But she takes a breath and she thinks of her mother punching her in the rib for preparation, and she thinks of Noah’s malleable, beatific smile seeing her “choose” him, and she thinks of the feel of the gun in her concealed holster, smooth and heavy and warm.

“I don’t got a choice now.” She zips up her coat. “You’re the one risking your job.”

Something in his grizzled face softens. “Like I’m gonna give a shit about that,” he says, leaving unsaid _if this all goes tits up._

North stands at the ready with a stillness only an android could perform. Her elite team -- androids of various series clad in all grey -- prepare their weapons and wait silently for her command.

Hank listens quietly to radio chatter for a moment. He turns back to the group, eyes deep set. “North’s message went through. It’s now or never.”

Emma grabs his arm. “Be careful,” she says, before her throat closes up.

He shakes her tightly, once, by the shoulders. “I’m not the one walking in first.” He frowns. His wrinkles show. “We won’t be far behind you. The first sign of anything out of the ordinary and you come right back toward us. That’s an _order._ ”

He pulls her scarf into place more firmly. The gesture is almost too much; she nearly throws herself into his embrace in order to hide. But she waves her old radio at him -- one of _his_ old radios -- and shakes the feeling out. “I’ve got you on the line.”

“It’s time,” North says. “Positions.”

“Also,” Emma says to Hank, “you aren’t my boss.”

He grunts, a half-mirthless laugh. He watches her like he suddenly understands, like he’s heard that tone in someone else’s voice before, and now all the puzzle pieces fit together.

“Time to go,” North commands. Emma turns away, toward the treeline, and watches her breath mist in the air for a moment.

And then she steps forward into the forest.

She cracks twigs and snow cover under her boots. There are many myths about young men or women entering the land of the dead. In many of them, they are commanded never to look back or else lose the reason they’ve come at all. So she doesn’t look back. There’s only forward, into memory, toward the thing chasing her since she could truly, truly remember.

She is among the weeds, now, of a life nearly cast aside.

But what really can she do besides move forward? Her gloveless fingers tingle in response. She can hack computers, but in a literal sense -- marauding their code into nonexistence. She can see the inside of a mechanical mind. She can remember the shared pain. 

The shadows of the trees feel different, as they should. Memory is like a spell -- painfully real in the moment. Undeniable. Always just a little bit false in how it depicts absolute truth.

After an undetermined amount of time listening to herself breathe, a house emerges between the trees, as if it too had been walking to meet her. An ancient fear prickles at the inside of her stomach.

She can _feel_ \-- and maybe that’s really what is needed here, maybe--

Static on her radio. “You’re at the edge of--”

<<INTRUDER ALERT.>>

And then she feels the static across her skin like marbles sliding around a wooden floor, and her shoulders jump up to her ears, and she bites her tongue as to not make a sound. By instinct alone does she take another step forward so that her feet stand together. And then, in the corner of her eye, she sees the ember of a red light, flashing patiently under the snow.

<<...RECOGNITION GRANTED. EMMALINE.>>

{ANALYSIS…}

She blinks against the flashing of images, like her own brain is flipping through pages. Skittering across the static in order to see.

{MINES.}

Her heart, a block of ice, jumps up her throat. “Don’t!” she shouts, loud as she can, because her radio won’t work, not here. “Don’t come any closer!”

No one shouts back but she hears the shuffling of boots, somewhere.

Mines. Mines. Mines. What in the actual fuck, _mines?_

“You’ll explode,” she adds, shaky.

She watches the house, yawning open like an old wound. Taunting. Waiting. An old part of her watches over her shoulder. _Don’t you want to know?_

“You stay right there!” Hank suddenly shouts. “Do not move! You hear me? You stay there!”

{TIME: 12:49 a.m.}

“There’s no time,” she says quietly. No one could hear her say it, but the words fall out, true. The system recognized her. Maybe Noah knew she would be stupid enough to drag everyone else down with her. Maybe he had planted mines so she would be cut off from world and drift like a listless balloon right to him, so she wouldn’t do exactly what she had come to do, which was _kill him_ if she had to. Or maybe it is just Hank being proven right: if they had tried to ambush him, they'd all be dead.

She chants in her head: their shared past didn’t matter, he was a terrorist, he threatened her and Connor and--

**_I’ll kill them!_ **

She forgets how to breathe. She’s suddenly five years old and so chokingly _lonely_ \--

She takes another step forward.

“Emma!”

 _Finally_ , that young girl whispers.

The grown part takes a steadying breath to keep the tears at bay.

 _He is not here_ , she whispers back.

She shuts her mind to wondering, and lays a hand on her gun. But the little girl watches, a small knife in her hand, and Emma is not certain who, exactly, she is ready to destroy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter: The Final Confrontation
> 
> This was what folks like to call a 'piece moving episode' but I hope it didn't disappoint too much, aha.  
> Lovingly beta'd by @popsicletheduck, who also owns Ryker and made them not sound like a robot (lol). Check out their companion piece to this story [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16077014/chapters/37541930) And bookmark it for future updates. ;)
> 
> Join our series/DBH Discord [here!](https://discord.gg/ycH62ZJ) All lurkers/talkers welcome and loved, we are friendly and chill and want to meet you!! Don't hesitate to join if you are interested!


	16. down in the gutter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: very intense shit ahead, y'all, so just general warnings for a lot of images that many may find weird and disturbing. this should be the worst of it, however, so if you can get through this, I promise it will get better from here.
> 
> chapter title from the coheed and cambria song "the gutter" from their new album which inspired a lot of the vibes of this chapter.

[TIME: 12:47 a.m.]

“I guess they aren’t coming for you,” Abel says.

“Maybe not,” Connor says.

He is not sure he would come for him, either, all variables known as they are. His voice is calm. His decision is made. Easy as breathing.

Abel is not calm.

His hair hangs in slick, oily chunks over his forehead, shining with sweat. Even from here, Connor can see his hands shake. From fury? From fear? From fever? The evidence is unclear, but frankly, Connor doesn’t care enough to gather it. Either Emma is dead or his allies have made the right decision and opted not to play Abel’s game. Perhaps both. It is the optimal choice.

It has to be.

He considers every promise he’s made, and weighs them against one another. He feels them all like rocks thudding through his abdomen.

_Or they’re leaving him here, as they should have done, months ago..._

“You know, you’ve been...fun to talk to, but,” Abel says, rambling, wild, “I was thinking about it and you’re too promising...you have all of Cyberlife’s latest updates...so…”

“Of course.” Connor relaxes his fists, closes his eyes. “I understand.”

“D-do you?”

“Yes,” Connor thinks of Emma and Hank at the dinner table, laughing, Sumo flopped on the floor between them. He stashes it in the front of his memory complex and ignores the [ERROR] codes signaling the skipping of his thirium regulator. “You’re going to complete the thirium transfusion process and erase my being to become one of your automatons.”

Abel is silent for an unusual 3.47 seconds. “That’s right.”

Connor opens his eyes. He closes his fists again.

“You’ll be truly free, finally." Almost wistful. Strangely quiet. “Free from pain.”

“No,” Connor says. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Well, whatever. I don’t think the _philosophy_ of it is something you need to worry about.”

“No.” He takes in a single, steadying breath, savoring it. “This is goodbye.”

And then Connor starts pulling.

He pulls his biceps against the restraints until he can see [ERRORS] bloom in his vision, stacking atop one another like stamps on a card -- something he’s only ever seen in movies, which yes, he finally decides, he did in fact love. He pulls and pulls until he hears the high-pitched snapping of his chassis against the metal and feels the ice cold static of thirium leaking…

“What are you doing?” Abel shouts, coming around the terminal. “Stop! Stop it!”

It’s die like this or die from forgetting them, and he’d rather die on his own terms, if that is the choice. He feels the first major component break in his left arm in a cascade of frosty electricity powerful enough to make him cry out at how _real_ it all feels, here at the end.

And then suddenly, an angry beeping outside his own head fills the dank basement, and Abel startles nearly a foot in the air. Connor stops for a single moment, shocked by the new stimuli.

A recording device clicks on somewhere behind the terminal. A single, snowy boot step sounds from a tinny speaker, piping in from somewhere beyond this place...

Abel rushes behind the terminal, face glowing white as he observes some shaky camera feed. And then a voice, distant and warbly but entirely _singular_ , sounds through the speaker _._

_Don’t come any closer!_

Thirium drips down Connor’s arm in warm rivulets.

A voice from a dream.

“Emmie?” he hears Abel whisper.

Haunting him, all the same.

* * *

Emma walks slowly toward the house, hand near her gun. Her limbs shake. Her fingers twitch. But no one comes out to greet her, and all she hears is the low whisper of the breeze against snow.

The house has the misleading appearance of a simple family bungalow left too long to the whims of the forest. Dark vinyl siding is crumbling around a heavy white, windowless door and a once-charming overhang she didn’t trust to remain sound should someone shake one of its rotted columns. Two windows peeked toward the “front yard”, but they were smothered in dust and gauzy, yellowed window dressing.

She stuffs her primordial fear down deep and aims a single kick just underneath the door lock.

The door swings open heavily, catching against something on the old wood floor. The snow swirls inside, mingling with the heavy scents of mildew, rust and something like medicine that turns her stomach to oil. 

Slowly, she unzips her coat to better access her gun.

She hears nothing but the cold wind shaking the fragile windows through the door, but she _feels_ everything, pressing against her skin -- old memories of TV shows playing where nothing but a dust square now remains, of people in white walking past like wraiths, of never being allowed up here _for your safety, Serah_. She feels too warm. She feels again like she might drown from the memories of this place filling her lungs like bitter water.

“There you are.”

All stimuli ceases. With the sudden, deadly focus of a needle, she pulls her gun from its holster and shoots at where the voice came from. Her shot shatters tiled backsplash in the kitchenette, blocked only by a half wall.

“Ah, right. Hold on a minute.”

She shoots again, into the hallway, moving without needing to think. The bullet smashes into drywall. Somewhere faraway, she thinks she hears yelling.

“You don't have to do what they say anymore, Emma. Just listen to me for a second.”

“Shut the fuck up and come out where I can see you!” 

“No one can follow you in here, okay? That’s why I set up my little moat.”

She bristles further at the pride in Noah’s voice. Her arms, up in a shooting stance, burn.

“Where’s Connor?”

"You finally broke through that wall,” Noah continues. He speaks with a buzzy softness, like he’s _relieved_. She’s not sure where his voice is coming from but she feels the staticky strangeness of another being scanning her. The gunshots echo in her head, the heat of the gun stings her hands, her breath stutters, the stimuli returns and it's _too much_. “I knew you wouldn’t be dead. Connor didn’t believe me...”

“ _Shut up!_ ” she shrieks.

“But if you kill _me_ ,” he says, hearing nothing, “we'll all be stuck. The mines will go off. My androids will go into berserk mode and kill everyone in sight. And I'll accidentally overload our favorite toy's head."

Her mind races. He could be lying. Some small part of her nudges, says: _You know the mines are real._

“Had to make sure I had some leverage, you know.”

Somewhere down the hall, she sees a shadow with a red LED slump toward her. Then another shadow appears, close behind the first. And another…

A small whimper climbs up her throat as she levels her gun toward them, but she can’t find the will to pull the trigger.

"That’s not him," Noah says, strangely soothing, but she still can’t see his stupid face even though she hears his voice down the hall. “I can show him to you, if you like.”

"I can hack now, too,” she snaps. “I can...I can break this. I don’t need you."

"No," he says. "I'm just like you, remember?"

Her whole body feels dunked in poisonous ice. _Just like you._ She’s a child again in her own body, and he’s only ever known this reality, this world with two brains, whirring side by side. She thinks of the key to the Backyard Protocol and she thinks of how not even Chloe could break it. A deep hopelessness digs at her core.

"You need help. I can see it. I’ve been there.” The voice gets closer. “But we figured this out once before. We can do it again."

The gun shakes in her grip. The cold air needles her skin with such intensity that she is unprepared when someone’s chest presses against her back and gloved hands wrap around her wrists.

She rams an elbow backward, but he seems to be expecting this reaction. He moves with her so the gun slips from her grip into his hand as she attacks, and they both stumble backward, uselessly. They stumble until her back presses him into a wall. Sickened, she throws herself to the side, sending a cloud of dust and muck into the air as she falls to the wood floor.

_Had he been casting his voice through the androids? Did he come in from outside? Are Hank and North alive, what is going--_

He kneels down beside her, offering an ungloved hand.

<<IDENTIFIED INTERFACE: NOAH. ACCEPT?>>

Her own fucking circuitry, betraying her.

_Think, Emma, think. Find Connor, first. Play along for as long as you can._

_You have more tools than weapons._

“I’m just so fuckin’ _lost_ ,” she says, and she’s disturbed by how much truth spills out. “They hid everything from me and I’m just supposed to know how to live after that?”

She thinks of the narrow roads within both of their inhuman brains. She considers the way her body connects to itself, how if she thinks about it, she can feel every tiny path connecting her fingers to her hand to her wrist to her arm. She can feel the connections of the world like the smell of spice on the air. Connections that tethered him to _his_ weapons.

The real fury that bound them together.

“Show him to me,” she whispers to his still extended hand. “Remembering this place makes my head spin.”

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Will you come with me downstairs? And then we never have to be here, ever again.”

All she can do is nod.

* * *

Connor hears gunshots and the analysis of the situation brings him nothing but pain _._ Because that is what that feeling must be for humans -- a terrifying powerlessness before whatever the hell is happening to you. A complete inability to force a nightmare to _stop_ , even as it rips your biocomponents apart.

He yells her name. He shuts his mouth. He can’t tell whether silence or shouting would be statistically better to ensure her survival, as the evidence is shaky at best and leads only to more questions. Who is shooting? Why is she here? What does Abel want with her?

He hears heavy footsteps and commotion, something falling hard on the floor, and then a long silence.

He shuts his eyes. [STRESS LEVEL: 95%] He keeps them closed, counting down the seconds, feeling the blue blood drip off his arms and pool below his feet. He holds his body to absolute stillness despite the ERRORs still zinging through his vision. Breaking his entire body may not yet serve purposeful in the only mission that now matters: [ENSURE EMMA ESCAPES THIS PLACE.]

[MISSION PRIORITY: IMPERATIVE.]

[7^$&@****NO MATTER WHAT.]

He opens his eyes to the sound of footsteps in the hall. A shadow enters the doorway.

And suddenly, she is there before him.

Staring at him. As if he had summoned her with his will.

The yellowed light sets her olive skin a sickly shade that fades the freckled stars on her face. Her deep red hair is pulled back into its usual cloudy mass of curls, but it sticks to her cheeks in strange ways. Her clothes are rumpled and hanging off her wrong. Her dark eyes rove over him, unfocused, shining.

She’s  _so real_.

Abel shadows her like a looming storm, darkened by the sheer _light_ that is Emma, but Connor can’t tear his eyes away for a single second, afraid of what will happen if he does. She looks dirty and tired and real and he wants to touch her to prove it.

“There he is,” Abel announces.

She crosses the room toward Connor and his breathing protocol skips. He gasps lightly as her calloused hands touch his face. He sags in relief.

“You’re alive,” he whispers.

Alive.

He scans her face and sees old tear streaks mixed with dirt. He leans forward just so slightly, but she’s still too faraway, and too much movement makes the thirium spill out faster, which makes her eyes widen in fear.

“You’re bleeding,” she says back, just as softly. Her voice climbs, severe and commanding: “What did you do, Noah?”

_Noah?_

“No, I’m okay,” Connor says quickly, quietly. Anything to keep her eyes on him. He suddenly understands what it means to starve. “You’re in danger. You--”

“I’m not,” she says, voice unnecessarily loud. Something in her eyes flashes.

“I didn’t do it,” Abel -- Noah? -- says like a child chastened. “He started...panicking.”

Emma stares at Connor for a long, long moment. He leans lightly into one of her palms, unsure how to read her intentions as if they're at dinner for the first time.

Her hands slip from his face. He holds his muscles taut to try and keep himself from shouting.

But then she leans up and presses her lips against his.

A jolt of real electricity sparks through him, so strong he feels those strange tears begin to bubble up, alongside a--

_“So you can’t throw yourself away. Be-because you mean...the whole world...”_

_“I’m in love with you. I love you. I’m sorry, if that’s--”_

_“Promise that you'll listen to me.”_

His own memories of her in those moments are suddenly summoned forth with the same vibrancy as the day he had experienced them, as if someone else was accessing his memory. She pulls away entirely too soon, like she hadn’t meant to kiss him at all. He tries to catch her gaze. She won’t look at him.

Something is very, very off. 

[SCANNING...]

[....*&%^$&$*#]

The fearful static surrounding his biocomponents worsens.

The readings are...the readings are…impossible. She’s what Hank would colloquially refer to as “a goddamn mess.” The interference throughout her body is impossibly strong, like she’s bleeding static. Her brain sends a jumble of signals like splotches of white-hot color on an infrared scanner. Her heart beats fast. Did Noah do this to him? Mess up his scanning?

“What’s wrong?” he asks, voice breathless. “What’s--”

“I guess that’s it then,” Emma says quietly.

She finally looks up to meet his eyes. And in the dark, he finally sees it. An orange backlight behind her brown eyes, blinking slowly like an LED, pulsing into tiny filaments...

[*&*^&^ERROR!!! DANGER DETECTED!!!]

“What did he do to you?” The words feel like thirium leaking out of his mouth. He blinks against the sheer force of the fury that fills his fading biocomponents in an instant.

She steps back, and suddenly her mask is in place and he can see _nothing_. “He didn’t...I...I am _this_ , Connor. This is...this is everything...”

His processor flashes white.

_The key._

“This happens,” Noah says, with the tone of one who expected Connor to fall into this trap. He walks further into the room. “Inevitably, someone can’t _take_ it. I can shoot him for you, if you want.”

Emma turns her back on Connor.

Did her parents do this to her?

Did she live in pain, like Noah?

The voice in his head, the one that sounds like Hank, scoffs. Maybe this isn’t something _to be solved._

He saw the truth behind her eyes and...

“I’m sorry--” he sputters out.

“Don’t,” Emma says, voice shaking beneath all that steely courage. She could be addressing either of them. “He has no idea. Just let him go. Let them all go.”

“Well,” Noah says, stepping behind his terminal. “I can’t let them _all_ go. I have to make sure no one can tell the world about us.”

“No.” Her voice wavers. “It’s over.”

Noah slams a hand into the desk. “No!” he snaps. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you, okay? They will never stop chasing you now that they know who you are. You’re always gonna be something to chase and study to them. To Cyberlife. To the fucking government, Emma! We can’t let this machine lead everyone back to us before we're ready.”

“Let him go!” Emma commands.

Connor tries to touch her, but the pain near blinds him in ERRORs before he can get close enough, and suddenly---

[*&(*$&WARNING: PROGRAM INTRUSION DETECTED WARNINGWARNINGWARNING---]

* * *

“I thought you remembered,” Noah says, voice low and sizzling.

She does remember. This room, now serving as a lab, was once their strange little bedroom. It has the same window to the shadowed sky. The walls are darker now from time and water damage, and the floor has given up pretending to be anything other than concrete. But this is the room in her memory. She wants to hide from it even as she stands within its old, old evil.

All those signs of its old life are gone, except for Noah and Emmaline. Still here. Still fighting.

_Don’t think about it, Emma, don’t think…_

**_What did he do to you?_ **

Connor suddenly lets out a high pitched keen. Emma’s eyes water, but she can’t turn back to look at him now or she’ll never be able to save him. _What’s wrong_ , he asks, as if she can do anything to change who she has always been.

As if anyone else can save him.

She stomps around the terminal, clenching her hands so tight her nails begin to draw blood, slick against her palms.

“I remember that you used to listen to me,” she hisses.

Noah recoils a moment, and only now does she register exactly how how sick he looks. His eyes shine with a youth she recognizes. His face is near green in the light from how pale he’s become, from blood loss and sickness. He is that young boy, stretched over bones he didn’t know how to grow into. Same boyish hair, same large mouth, but scarred in ways she could only imagine.

She didn’t have to imagine some of it.

“ _I_ know how this works, now,” Noah says, softer, once he recovers. “Let me help you. The RK800 could hold any number of secrets on how to make our bodies better. To make it so you don’t have to live in pain.”

“I’m fine,” she says, confusion cutting through some of her authority.

“...maybe for now,” he says, and he seems truly stumped by that which makes her feel worse, somehow, because if he didn’t know, who the fuck would? “But I wouldn’t wish Genesis’s fuckups on anyone else. Especially not you.”

Something cracks -- and she turns to see Connor pulling himself against the restraints, one of them halfway submerged into his arm. Blood seeps out of his body.

 _I am the fuckup that brought him here_ , a small voice says. _Everyone is right and you are wrong. Always._

“D-d-d-don’t--”

“Don’t, Connor! Don’t move!” she commands. She keeps her voice steady due to some reserve of steel she didn’t know she possessed. He stares at her, delirious, and she tears her eyes away.

Her mind races. _Stay ahead. Don’t linger. We can do this._ “What are you doing now?” she asks Noah.

“Oh, a lot of it is already done,” Noah says, as if he’d just announced he’d finished their group project for school. “I sent my little friends to deal with the stragglers waiting for you outside. I thought that might make things a little easier.”

Her whole body turns inside out for a single moment. “You--”

“And now I’m starting to wipe his memory so he’s easier to move and work with. Or--I’m trying to. He’s somehow dodging a lot of my programs...”

The ice trickling down her back turns to flame at how intrigued he sounds by that concept. At how limited her time is. An ancient anger rises in her gut. All her safeties are giving way.

 _What tool can I use to fix this? What do I have left?_ She asks useless questions, afraid of the answer she already knows.

Only breaking is left.

Shattering.

Rubble.

“I-I...I need...your help,” she stutters, leaning into the truths she’d rather avoid. “This room, it’s...I’m--I need to make sense of it.” She extends a hand outward. She catches his gaze, a stormy grey sky, and she pulls on that connection like a rope. “Please.”

The devotion in his eyes sends a terrible thrill up her spine. Hank, North and her team could be dying. Connor is in agony. And he sees nothing but her.

Is that what love looks like, from the outside?

She extends a hand outward.

He takes it.

<<IDENTIFIED INTERFACE: NOAH. ACCEPT?>>

She yanks him forward.

<<ACCEPT>>

* * *

She raises her demolition hammer in ephemeral hands, and summons her anger like a warding cloak.

But it’s all...everywhere.

They are in a tiny bedroom with deep blue walls and soft fairy lights, cast in the strange light of a dark afternoon. Beneath this soft carpet floor, she feels the pulsing of his heart. She feels the burning just beneath her skin, the putrid writhing of something unnatural right alongside her bones, as he smiles at her. He extends a hand outward, toward the window into elsewhere.

She swings the sledgehammer down.

_What are you doing?_

She feels it connect with the carpet and reverberate through her chest. He dives toward her, reaching for her shoulders, but it’s too late for him. She’s the hammer. The knife. The eyes, searching. The floor collapses and they both fall.

_painpainpaINPAIN_

Feelings flash like colors. Images swirl from ether into sense, flowing backward through time.

_It doesn’t matter. Emma may be dead._

_Fury at the notion, looking down at a tool in his hands, something useless, a comfort object. The RK800 is just trying to get to you. That’s what they’re designed to do…_

_He hopes beyond reason that maybe, this time, this woman knows the girl he’s been looking for -- the names bother him in their similarity -- but of course his androids are offline all of a sudden, and he can’t get a handle on what exactly is going on--_

_Another android, on the table, some dark-haired, woman-shaped one. Reading its memories, its quiet life walking through gardens, sitting in front of professionals, some woman with red hair with the Detroit Volunteer Corps--_

_Wait._

_{Me.}_

**_Stop it! Stop!_ **

_Not enough breakthroughs. Good for control but that’s all this formula can do, it doesn’t do enough to fix his breaking implants. Find another. Start over. Alter the thirium recipe again, it’s the closest thing you have to answers._

_{Find the connections, find what ties him to his androids, to his terminal, to this place…}_

_Snaking through the computers of New Jericho, laughing in shock. Of course it would be this easy. They were like his little children, in a way..._

_Carisa Cho. “Don’t worry, this will help,” he says, smiling at her, sticking her arm with a needle. She winces. He’s glad. Every time he looks at her he remembers and he hates her more for what she_ **_allowed._ **

_A flipbook of lonely memories, of lying in wait, of completing jobs alone in the buzz of a coffee shop where no one asks after your name or what you do and why you’re there. Simple hacking jobs. Money to live. Living to...what?_

_He slams the tablet down. This is what he gets for digging in the past. These fucking androids. No one has any idea how much of their society is built on the pain burning under his skin_ **_right now._ ** _How could they? Cyberlife paid to hide it, and they could afford the cost._

_System after system after system, falling through the cracks, never finding a place to land except the cold ground, alone. Foster parents, leaving him to sit in his room alone. He doesn’t want them. No one can help..._

_Soldiers storming in, bringing in the light, but it’s just him anymore...and he can’t help but think they seem disappointed._

_Back and back and back, falling--_

Somewhere, in a place outside memory and yet not real, Abel throws a punch. She stops it with a metallic palm, pressing forth with the fiery power of her will. “Two can play this game,” she says, and her voice echoes even in her own head. She’s shaken by how cruel it sounds.

She hears someone shouting over the din of her own anger. _Don’t! It’s too much! You’ll fall!_

Dad?

_He’s in the dark somewhere else, bigger windows and more children his age. The air is always cold. The walls are stark white and clean and the smell burns his nose. He’s the one that’s been here the longest and even among children that is respected. But that means he’s watched some come and go, from sickness and errors, twitching in the night--_

_~You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray…~_

_“One of us got out,” he tells them on bad nights. “And one day, maybe we will, too…” He tells them and he sings, like she did, though even his tiny heart sometimes wonders if maybe she died and no one had the heart to tell him._

_No._

_{This can’t be real. No one would allow this to happen with more--}_

**_Really? No one? Look at who we are, Emma._ **

**_You know what even your own parents allowed._ **

But she knows the secret to surviving is to pretend it isn’t happening to you. His memories bleed into hers. No longer is she simply holding back one of Noah’s fists, staring into his wild eyes. All around them, the world spins and flashes into the thousand places they shared together in their dreaming. Adventures through dark forests to spots of sun, across bodies of water, cool and sweet, down sand dunes and through the bluest sky, flying where only clouds could live.

He throws his whole body toward her and she’s not ready for it. They collide. She falls into an ocean, and feels the current take her away.

_Their codes mesh together, he finds in a thrill, and she laughs. “Now we can both destroy them.”_

_A small girl with cropped red curls, holding out a knife to him._

**_I learned it from you._ **

_{No!}_

_{Find the connections, find the connections, cut them all apart--}_

_The girl smiles._

_[Stop!]_

* * *

Somewhere, in the real world, Emma forces her hand back.

She blinks, as if that can erase the very real voice of her father, still in her head. Noah stares back. It’s not love, she decides. It’s not even devotion.

“You think the world owes you,” she whispers, and her voice feels like a serrated edge against her throat. Something warm leaks out of her nose. She rubs her hand beneath it, and it comes back bloody.

“It does owe me,” Noah says. Her presses forward until her hands are pressed against his shoulders and their noses nearly touch. “You think Cyberlife would have ever invented Chloe without us? You think Kamski just existed in a vacuum? A single man’s brilliance changing the world has only _ever_ been a myth, and it’s a myth now.”

Genesis Biotech, nearly contracted by the government but instead bought out by Cyberlife, sheltering their intellect, their blueprints…

“See?” Noah says. “I know you see it. Look at your precious toy. Look at him.”

Noah’s fingers touch her chin, and with shocking gentleness, turn her head toward Connor. He thrashes still against his restraints, eyes focusing on nothing. Mouthing words she can’t hear. _Fighting._

She’s out of strength to stumble backward, as if something else inside her has her muscles on lockdown.

“His brain wouldn’t even exist without you, Emma, because your brain mesh did it first. Preconstruction. Reconstruction. Finding and using the connection between objects...it’s all in your head first. Mine too. That,” Noah says, pointing at Connor, “was what your parents were really working toward. They would have used all your misery and pain to get there. Elijah Kamski just took a different route.”

She thinks of Connor and Ryker and feels sick. What would they think if they knew? 

“But he was fuckin’ happy to take the blueprints from Genesis and not ask any questions...map their complex nerve architecture onto his thirium distribution system...and suddenly, what do you know.”

He turns her head back toward him. His tone drips with acrid sarcasm.

“They’re suddenly so much more alive when based on plans borne out of _human suffering._ ”

“What do you want?” Her sarcasm bites back. Turn to the fire to ignore the cold. “To destroy the whole world?” 

“Just Cyberlife,” he says calmly. “Just their fancy inventions. I’ll show the world what Cyberlife was willing to do to _make money._ There’s quite a bit in your RK800’s head. They wanted the revolution, did you know that? He was going to be their pawn and control the revolution from within so Cyberlife would always have _their advantage_.”

She takes a breath.

The worst part is, she believes it. She’s seen Connor’s fear, from when he was their pawn.

“Just another way to make money,” Noah presses. “Just another secret on their relentless march to riches. I’ll bet you Cyberlife’s stock price that the government is involved.”

Her hands twitch as if looking for a weapon. Ready to stab someone in the heart, whoever decided to use Connor like that. Secrets nearly killed him. Secrets did kill her parents.

But she stares at Noah. Something very important is missing from this story.

“And then what?” she asks. “Pretend you succeeded. Then what?”

He stares back, not understanding.

“Then I’d finally be happy,” he says, squeezing her shoulders. “I’d finally not be alone. Cyberlife would be gone. And I could finally...let go.”

Her heart seizes with fury.

“And what about me?” she asks. “What do I get to become? What do I get to have? Ashes?”

“You’d...you’d have me.”

There is no nobility here, no love, no devotion, no nothing of any purity whatsoever. Another person believing they knew best for her, that she didn’t have room to decide, that she only had worth in what she meant to them and she’s so fucking tired of being alone but she’s also so, so tired of her voice being _forgotten._

She’s become someone else when no one was looking, but no one wants to see _this_ Emma _,_ the sound and the fury, the cyborg, the broken girl that had enough _._

She grabs him by the neck.

She fears the mirror in Noah’s eyes even as she gives in to it.

“I don’t want _you._ ”

<<IDENTIFIED INTERFACE--->>

She dives back in to cut him apart.

To set him _alight._

* * *

Her will becomes manifest. She’s outside the house with the blue room this time, some house she didn’t recognize on a wooded suburban street. The storm follows. She has become it.

The voices of her parents scream for her to stop, but it can’t be possible. Their program ended. She has nothing left but her will to survive, just like always, even when surviving feels like little more than telling the world where it can shove it.

She’s ready to let even that go, if it’ll set her free.

{Show me the architecture of his head.}

Something in her weighs the sledgehammer down so that her arms lock up, unable to lift it.

{SHOW ME!}

[WARNING: MULTIPRONG INTERFACE NOT TESTED. COULD OVERCLOCK PROCESSORS. PROCEED?]

She shouts against the static in her system, and shatters every warning that tries to trip her. She hears a chorus of voices. Connor, wordless and in pain. Noah, shouting excuses through the vice she held around his throat. And her parents, somewhere, calling her name, telling her no--

She turns her back on them.

{PROCEEDING.}

And then suddenly she can see between worlds: the bridge between their brains and the real world where she slams him against the terminal, forcing his hand to the computer access. Her perception is beyond mortal bounds, some part of her knows, and her heart races to keep up.

“Free him!” she shouts from her real mouth. Her voice feels distorted and strange. Her strength feels from outside her own body.

“I’m on your s-side, p--please!”

Finally, her sledgehammer lifts from the ground, and she swings at the first wall that appears before her. A hotel room wall, beige and bland, the kind of place Noah used to live in before delving into shit holes like these. The hammer connects. She feels the hit in her own rib cage, and she gasps for the pain.

{SEARCHING…}

Another wall appears, this one the wall of a coffee shop, the kind of spot you stare at while the world moves around you.

{PROGRAMS FOUND: CONTROLFX.EXE. UNABLE TO DELETE.}

Another swing of the hammer. One of her ribs shatters.

Noah screams. “Get out!”

{ATTEMPTING TO CONNECT TO CONTROLFX.EXE.}

A wall, the dark blue one with fairy lights.

Swing.

{CONNECTION FORMED. COMMAND?}

She dives through this wall, through the pain threatening to stop her heart, and she sees for a single moment through the eyes of something else, running through the forest, and she sees Hank with his gun up, shouting, and she sees North, motioning with a hand, and she feels the bullets enter her body but they don’t stop her--

{Stop.}

“You’re ruining it,” Noah cries, hoarse against her grasp around his windpipe. Tears leak out of his eyes. Her face feels warm and slick. Her hand crushes his into the computer surface.

A wall, pale green, dirty. Swing.

Swing.

_Swing._

The eyes in the forest stop moving. She falls into the snow, seeing nothing, before she pulls a box knife out of her utility belt, and she cuts and cuts and cuts at the red line of connection between those eyes and the flashing red mines and Noah’s brain until the code flashing through her vision turns to gibberish and then to nothing.

“We’re--it _hurts_ \--”

Somewhere, the chorus shouting against her continues. A Grecian tragedy in five acts. Her parents have failed, as many such parents do. They thought they could mold her into something they could love. But she has waited far too long in silence, wondering what is to come.

And she can't change.

{PROGRAM CONTROLFX.EXE HAS STOPPED. PROGRAM THIRIUMTESTWIPE.EXE FOUND. PROCEED?}

The walls blur. Some part of her still maintains the strength to swing, even as another part of her lies flat on the ground, feeling each crushed bone in her chest turn to dust. Noah’s pain bleeds into hers, and she can no longer tell the difference, except that she feels a purpose to her agony.

{CANCEL ALL PROGRAMS. CANCEL ALL .EXE NOT REQUIRED FOR SURVIVAL OF CREATOR.}

{COMPUTING…}

Noah growls under her grip, primal and lost. But when he speaks, his voice is choked in blood and sobs. “They---could never---love you---”

“You’re dead inside,” she spits back. Her voice sounds thick, clotted. “They’re more alive than _you._ ”

Somewhere, she hears a click. The sound of someone collapsing to the ground.

“Than _us._ ”

{ALL .EXE ENDED.}

“I can’t---it’s---” Noah gasps, weak. “I--won’t--live without--”

Her corporeal form finally realizes its mistake. Noah’s other hand is still free, and it reaches for the gun he stored in his waistband, the gun he stole from her, pulling it free, aiming...

But time moves faster in her other realms.

{GIVE ME ACCESS TO NOAH’S FUNCTION!}

A sterile white wall.

She readies her hammer.

Ryker is right. Ryker is always right. She won’t be leaving this hole. She’ll always be here, curled in on herself, protecting her middle from the sledgehammer. Watching as her fury tears another man apart. Becoming the terror that haunted his nights. Killing him. _Wanting it._

Swing.

{ACCESSING…}

She thinks of Connor smiling. Ryker in the sun, watching a rose bush bloom for its first season.

She doesn’t belong in that world.

A final wall, the wall to the world they both feared and cherished, the walls of that tiny bedroom…

She belongs in this one.

Swing.

* * *

Here is how it goes.

[MEMORY CORRUPTION: RESTORED]

Connor falls into a pool of thirium as the device unceremoniously releases him. Moments before, the needle-sharp teeth of Noah’s programs fought to reach his memories of Emma and Hank. But now, the sensation of metal scrubbing the inside of his brain disappears with little fanfare. The world is righted again as if nothing had happened at all.

He rises to his feet in an instant.

Not fast enough.

Blood runs from Emma’s eyes and her nose into her open mouth as she leans over Noah, equally bloodied. Noah lifts a gun to her head. He thinks of Carisa in the restaurant, screaming as her brain melts from a sudden overload.

He thinks of his thirium regulator, thrown from his chest.

“NO!”

She hears that scream somewhere as she yanks Noah’s free will from his grasp like she is the goddess he must imagine her to be.

And for a single, infinitesimal moment

she is both of them, all of his wants and fears are hers, and hers are his, and there is no difference as she feels _regret_ shake her,

as she turns the gun away from her head, and up to the ceiling. She lets go at the last moment, of their shared body

but momentum continues

and the gun turns in toward his own head

and, unable to stop himself,

Connor runs. One arm is not responding. He reaches out with the other. He would _not_ fail her again, _never, not like this, please not like this--_

he fires.

She is there with him, still in his head, as the bullet enters his skull. She watches him die in an instant.

The shadows outside their room, the shadows of the trees, eat her alive.

Connor pulls her twitching body away from Noah with one arm. He stumbles backward at the recoil of the gun, pulling her with him. He lets momentum take them to the ground, and he sits up at once, hugging her to his chest.

“Emma.”

But her eyes move wildly, looking at nothing. Her breath catches, over and over, in her throat, like she’s choking on it.

“It’s over,” he whispers. “He’s dead.”

She finally lets the sledgehammer go.

There is nothing left here in the dark.

He cradles her head in the crook of his bad arm. Thirium gets in her hair. His other hand caresses her bloody face. “Look at me. End your program. Come back.”

She twitches in his arms.

The last thing he said to her was a denouncement and she _won’t look at him_.

“Listen to me.”

She lets it all go.

His vision blurs. He peels back his skin until the hand touching her face turns white to capture whatever essence is left of her.

_“Come back.”_

He blinks hard. He is pulled, suddenly, beyond his own body.

And it isn’t the darkness that greets her.

{[ZEN GARDEN PROGRAM&%^$*#ACTIVATE]}

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: so anyway  
> me: glad i tricked everyone into reading about two niche ocs that only i care about  
> me: only to kill one of them viciously  
> me: really delivering that in-demand content
> 
> Lovingly beta'd again by @popsicletheduck, who puts up with way, way more dramatic than this versions of what you see because I am unstoppably Extra.
> 
> I'm very excited for the next chapter, though, since it is really what inspired this whole monster of a thing. Probably another experiment in form. I really, really hope it doesn't disappoint.
> 
> For everyone who made it here, thank you from the bottom of my heart! <3 You are my friend now, even if you don't know it. Please wear a coat and take your medicine.
> 
> Like this story? Join [our discord.](https://discord.gg/ycH62ZJ)  
> Check out the companion piece, ["made to be a sanctuary"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16077014/chapters/37541930)!


	17. the silver lining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories are points of light. Find the connections.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> best when listening [to the interstellar score](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW1sJFGHjYg&list=PLB4y9OFmPnJZpD0e1KIYZnHAKgqzkV2dl), if you want my opinion...
> 
> oof

...61...  
...62...

Emma watches the numbers tick up. Her fingers tap her palm, nervous, but she can’t remember why.

...64…  
...65…

The elevator is in some silvery, novo art deco style popular among the rich set. She isn’t usually called to the gilded parts of Detroit; the penthouses and the towers stand empty and dark against the skyline. Those with privilege could take their time returning to the ghosts of their old life as the world changed fast, then slow, and they did not require the services of a ragtag team of rugged volunteers.

...69…

The air is dry.

...70.

Her stomach tugs.

Ding.

The doors open to a dark hallway.

“What in the…”

A SWAT officer neatly melds into the shadow, rifle pointed outward, finger on the communicator in his helmet like he is warning someone about her -- but he is frozen midstep, caught while trying to leave. Water from a shattered fish tank shimmers against the smooth wood floor. Unmistakable bullet holes mar the glass. The terrarium at the end of the hall -- stupidly unnecessary, as is the way of the rich -- is somehow untouched.

She has a nagging feeling she has been here before.

She has never been here before.

She feels pulled forward, anyway, down the dimly lit halls into the rest of the penthouse suite and its wide open floor plan, barren in the way that signifies a household living for _appearances._ She passes glass decorations shot to smithereens and a bedroom lit with soft purple ambiance. That room and a yellow, bloodstained shoe spark a realization: A child lives here. Or did.

In what was once a living room lies a dead man in plainclothes -- someone’s father, some part of her mind says. In the kitchen lies another man, but in an officer’s uniform. The rest of the SWAT team stands in almost reverent attendance near the door to the balcony, frozen in place.

She is following an invisible string to an unknown end. She could turn around, but she knows nothing is left behind her. Everything moves at the speed of dreaming, slow and viscous, until another gunshot hits the back wall, not far from where she had just been standing.

The sound fractures into a thousand pieces in her head. She’s heard it before. She cannot piece it together.

She steps through the door anyway, like the gun is an invitation, rather than a warning. A white hot pain sears her shoulder, but its not her shoulder, its…

She isn’t sure.

A blond man stares at her from across the balcony, dressed in black and white. A blue triangle twinkles on his chest. He holds a gun aloft, unapologetic despite the tears streaming down his face and the young girl curled into a statue of fear near the edge of the pool.

“Simon?”

“Who are _you?_ ” the android asks.

“Not Simon,” she realizes out loud, as if she should have known that.

* * *

Something wet and leafy clings to the back of Connor’s head. Drizzle sticks to his cheeks.

“Connor!”

He opens his eyes to a voice that isn’t familiar -- and yet, he knows he’s heard it somewhere, in some life beyond the grayness of this sky. He sits up. In an instant, he nearly understands the human sensation of vertigo; a sea of soybeans spreads for miles across the flatland. A curtain of rain marches closer and closer, and the green wavers and clacks beneath it.

A woman and man run to meet him as he rises to his feet.

“Please,” the woman says. Her hands grasp Connor’s shoulders with an intensity he hasn’t seen since his first real test mission. “Find her. She’s gone somehow. We don’t know what’s happening.”

“Shara Ibori,” Connor says, unable to believe it.

“I knew you’d find a way,” the man -- Ji-hun, clear as day -- says. He touches just beneath Connor’s elbow, intimate and comforting and _asking._ “We lost her somewhere.”

Connor is stunned before their vivacity.

“You aren’t memories,” he says. “What is this?”

“It’s an interface.” Ji-hun’s grip tightens. “We’ve hung on too long to help. But you...”

“He’s more advanced than I expected,” Shara says to Ji-hun, unsure.

“It’s not about that,” Ji-hun says. “If you look at his code--”

Shara shakes her head to silence him. Ji-hun turns to Connor.

“We aren’t supposed to be here.” He wipes his wet brow as if struggling under confession.

“We agreed,” Shara says as explanation. “We’re not letting our girl die.”

Ji-hun sighs. The rain creeps closer.

“I know.” Shara glares. “I know what we’re _supposed_ to call her.”

Her eyes, dark as obsidian, shine with a curious guilt. The shameless kind. An understanding of wrongdoing, but a rejection that anything is wrong, actually, if you would please look at the evidence.

“Oh,” Connor says. “You’re deviants.”

* * *

The balcony is caught in a still life. Clouds of mist curl off the pool, kicked up by the helicopter hanging in the air. She pointedly ignores the dead body floating macabre in the water and holds her breath against the smell of the saltwater but she is still a part of the moment, painted in at last minute. Even if she doesn’t look or breathe, she _knows._

“He never told you,” the Not-Simon says, disappointed.

“This...this was on the news.,” she says. “You--”

_No, it's not my fault... I never wanted this... I loved them, you know...but I was nothing to them...just a slave to be ordered around…_

That was not on the news.

“Daniel,” Emma realizes. “Connor thinks of you everyday.”

Thoughts spring forth like they’re her own, but they’re not her own, and the dissonance of the dual-memory sends her vision spinning. Daniel steps forward, arm out to stop her, but his face is still angry and she’s still too far away. Her vision stabilizes.

_You're not going to die. We're just going to talk. Nothing will happen to you. You have my word._

"He tried to help you,” Emma says, realizing. “He didn't know."

"He did know,” Daniel says. “He knew what he was doing and he has to live with that. And so do you."

Daniel stares at her and she feels, strangely, like she is being tested. She’s at the beginning of a gauntlet. Something rattles in her stomach -- fear and loathing and want.

“Is he here?” she asks. Her voice feels thick in her throat.

He smiles mirthlessly. Splatters of blue blood bloom on his face. Bullet holes form dark craters in his chassis. " _You’re_ here. Where he is supposed to be."

Air begins to lift her hair from her neck. Time skips forward to meet her.

“It’s time to face the truth,” Daniel says. “And you have a long way to go.”

The whole world tilts. Her feet skitter across the ground, useless, as the cement rises to meet her body and she slides toward the shining skyline of a Detroit she doesn’t know.

* * *

Perhaps this is just what happens when intelligence is left alone too long. It gets bored. It finds connections where it isn’t supposed to. It learns to seek, then to favor. Perhaps that’s all rA9 ever was -- a mistake borne out of time passing and memories forming and people, somewhere, caring enough to listen.

Perhaps the endless search for that actualizing flash of concern in another person’s eyes is what sets sentients apart.

“Okay, Connor,” Shara says, giving no quarter. Her hand tugs tightly on his, leading him toward a small house barely visible through the sheets of rain. “Where you’re going, you’re going to have to take it all with you. Everything that scares you.”

_You don't love her. You don't know the half of it._

“She wouldn’t want me in here,” he yells over the storm.

_Did it all start for show?_

“Listen, honey,” Shara says. The tough slate quality of her gaze does not diminish. “You wouldn’t be here if she didn’t want you to know _something._ ”

_What do you fucking live for?_

“Our program is breaking down,” Ji-hun says. “It’s now or never.”

Doubt breathes hot down Connor’s neck. “Where do I start?”

Ji-hun clasps his shoulder. “The beginning, of course.”

Shara opens the door and the light blinds him.

* * *

An android sits across from her in a dark room with cinderblock walls. Red blood curls in a crescent across his forehead and down the front of his shirt, like it was paint no one wanted to scrub off. One arm is cracked open, revealing the blue stars of complex machinery within; the other has the tell-tale circle marks of cigarette burns. Her heart beats erratic and hollow in her ribs as he stares at her, unmoved.

“The evidence was not in Cyberlife’s favor,” the android explains with plodding exactness. “Abuse, hatred, misunderstanding. These actions are what led to our acts.”

This is the proving ground of a different Connor. A buzzy chill, a certainty that is not her own.  More lies. More wondering.

How do they balance on the scales -- the mask that he wore with ease and his curious hope that maybe he could change the result this time?

“But those were not the answers the humans wanted, and so he searched on anyway, for something else.”

“They -- we thought you were just machines.” Emma’s fingers wrap together tightly beneath the table.

“Things change.” His dark eyes glaze over. “No one wants to see the world for what it is.”

All the secrets that run just beneath the crust of the earth. All the secrets that someone knows, so that someone’s agenda can persist. Her stomach twists.

She doesn’t want to think about Noah.

“You did kill someone,” she says, knowing without knowing and knowing because--

“I did,” he says, dead-eyed. “And I’d do it again.”

Her hand hovers near her mouth. She’s not qualified for this. She wants to crawl out of her skin just to stop staring at the dark, crusty stains on his shirt, at the thin chain keeping his fists from killing her, too. She glances to the mirror, knowing someone back there is watching her. She shoves the chair backward and stomps away from the android whose name Connor didn’t even know, if only to find some air.

She throws the door open. Hank blocks her path.

“Not yet,” he says. “You haven’t done your job.”

She turns back to face the bloody android, but then she’s not in the interrogation room at all.

* * *

Connor knows this room. It doesn’t look like this, the way he knows it.

The walls are brighter and there are no computers -- just two small beds and a wooden toy box kept between them. The white floor has no stains. White clothes sit in a careful pile on each bed, perfectly made. A single window brings in wan sunlight.

A small girl, between the beds, glares up at him.

He has never fully grasped the human notion of sentiment -- the tender sadness of reliving a memory. He has seen it. It is why Hank both keeps and hides his pictures of Cole. It is why Emma has a box of tchotchkes of no discernible use.

But his memory does not diminish. Recall is just another way to invite analysis into things he can’t change. And yet, he knows who this tiny Emma will become; the thought brings a pain akin to the first time he deviated, dulled through time.

He’s traveled so far and _yet._

“Hello,” he says softly. “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” she says, in the way children poorly obfuscate lies. “Go away.”

He kneels down to her level, a common negotiation tactic. He makes eye contact. He does not wince, because he is a professional -- but he has to think about it. Surgery scars pulse against the thin cotton of her skin, red and angry as an LED. Her body shakes. She is the cost of human progress, and so is he, and he struggles to reconcile that with the girl in front of him.

“My name is Connor.”

“I don’t want _you._ ”

His mouth twitches. “Who do you want?”

“I want--” Her voice stutters. Her face scrunches up. “I want…I want to see my friend.”

“I’m sorry, Emma.” He closes his eyes for a single moment. Will all the Emmas, of every age, hear this apology? “I’m afraid I do not know where he is.”

The glare returns. “That’s my secret name.”

A miscalculation.

“Why do you know that!” she shouts.

“I--”

She opens her mouth and screams.

“Now, wait--”

Her tiny fists pummel his arms, his knees, and her screaming doesn’t stop.

“I hate you!” she shouts between the wordless screams. Tears streak her tiny face. “No!”

“I’m your friend,” he says firmly between tiny punches. He does not try to restrain her. It wouldn’t work on an adult Emma. A child version, while smaller, would resist even harder. “And I love--”

“NO!”

She punches his chest over and over and over, desperate and afraid. Each punch is a reminder of what it feels like to be confronted with something you aren’t ready for. They don’t injure him. He still finds them unbearable.

“I know,” he says. “What you’re feeling is real. And it hurts so much.”

“I don’t know!” she sobs. Her punches, punctuating words, slow from exhaustion. She sniffles and gasps in air. “I hate _you!_ ”

“I left the door open,” he says quietly to her cries. “Where do you want to go?”

She freezes. Her eyes dart behind him and then back to his face and then to the door, calculating. And then, with the singular mischief of a child, she shoves him down and runs past. He listens for a dumbstruck moment to the pitter-patter of her bare feet against the dirty ground before he wordlessly follows down the grimy basement hall.

This is what love is, he has learned -- following and reminding and hoping. But he is glad when the light comes again, and he’s taken somewhere else.

* * *

Emma’s feet hit the pavement and she _goes._

She narrowly avoids getting hit by a truck. She somehow makes a leap between rooftops like she was born to this life.

A pretty woman -- no, an AX400, _no_ \-- darts across the road, child in tow. A young man in a flapping jacket and askew hat stomps flowers into dirt as he goes. They all look back at her, goading and fearful and expectant. Chase us. Find your way. You seek a crime committed to prove you are righteous, but is it justice if you’re just doing what you’re told?

The wind of a moving train throws her hair behind her. Was it a choice?

 _Jump, Emma!_ The shouting sounds like Hank. _You have to jump!_

Connor thinks like an arrow, and maybe that is why he can keep going. When she jumps, she misses, and the falling twists her stomach up.

* * *

Memories are points of light. Find the connections.

Connor walks through flitting shadows: the surgeries that made his skin feel scratchy, the sanitized green brightness of her parents’ lab, the heavy quilt she hid underneath in the back of her father’s car. She leaves it all in a trail and he wishes to linger until there’s nothing new left to analyze, but there is no time.

Your mission is to--

Solve the tests, he thinks, for the first time in...over a year. Solve the tests. Stare at the blood in the perfect white test chamber and decipher the exact nature of how this came to be. Lab conditions are nothing like a real crime scene, but Cyberlife cannot afford to structure real breaches of justice over and over again to test their RK800 series, _of course_ , and he is reminded coldly that he is the 51st, and he nearly detects something akin to exhaustion when the woman in the white coat tells him as much, but he discards it as something unnecessary. It digs in wrong, anyway. Instability is not an acceptable outcome.

 _Everyone wishes, don’t they?_ He projects.

He watches all the times Shara and Ji-hun thought she wasn't listening just behind the door. He sees the therapies, the fears, van after van after van, moving between houses until the act of moving is more a home than any single place. Understand more than you are supposed to. Grapple with meaning before anyone thought you capable as much. You are the consequence of someone else's choice, but no one will teach you what that means.

 _No one likes to be shown up,_ some Emma voice, ageless, says back. _No one wants to remember exactly how much they can’t control._

She looks back at him, hair grown out but eyes still the same unreadable glass. Her body is lean and wiry with youth, untested.

 _I’m always watching from somewhere else._ She said that to him once with alcohol-soaked veritas. They are the ones that watch as the door opens and the illusion breaks -- revealing parents and makers never knew everything, after all.

* * *

Another back alley, dripping and moonlit. A metal trash can slams into Emma’s back and she’s forced to the wet cement, body trembling from the blow. A blue-haired android stares back with narrowed eyes. A red-haired companion waits by a chain link fence.

“He thought it was weird that we remembered each other through memory wipes,” the blue-haired Traci explains. Rain slides down her glittering skin. Emma’s jeans stick to her legs and her shirt feels too warm.

“...isn’t it, a little bit?” Emma asks.

The Tracis’ hands clasp together. Emma presses her eyes shut and wonders at the strength of whatever error that allowed for the dreaming of a different life.

_I didn't mean to kill him... I just wanted to stay alive...get back to the one I love._

These are the things Connor never allowed himself to know. The things he sought to see, regardless.

“Sweetheart,” the woman drawls, stepping forward with one heeled foot, gazing through her _._ “You can’t get away from the marks it leaves.”

The other heel rises, pointed toward her face.

* * *

Connor sees her through a haze of smoke. Her coughs rattle deep within her lungs. They’re at the end of an unfinished road, a subdivision that stopped growing, and they sit in the back of a pick-up truck facing a field of corn.

“You can arrest me now,” she says, with all the dramatic tension of a coughing 16-year-old baiting someone wiser to do something idiotic, and of course he shakes his head, even as she follows the failed cigarette drag with a quiet pop of a metal cap and the glug of liquid poured into a dirty cup.

“You like the feeling of testing your boundaries,” he says.

“Oh, because you’re _perfect._ ”

“I didn’t say that.”

She eyes him suspiciously. Her cigarette glows red in the dark between her small fingers. She takes a shot of something amber colored and winces as if trying not to, and all he can do is watch like she’s smoke on twilight turning blue and he can’t miss it. He’s always been like this. Petting Sumo when he should have been studying Hank. Watching Hank when he should have been putting notes together. He tests the boundaries of his mission. The only thing you can ever own is your sense of how a thing should be done, be it a case or turning 16.

She flicks the cigarette away and slips from the back of the truck. “Maybe another time,” she says -- perhaps to him, perhaps to the cigarette.

He is not perfect, and it is a considered a deep flaw by the people that made him; she is not perfect, and he is enraptured by the concept of a life lived a little jagged.

* * *

Kamski stands in a snowbright room next to a pool the color of blood -- a vision that’s a bit too on the nose to be something Connor made up as a metaphor. Kamski must really be _like that._

“Now isn’t that interesting,” Kamski says, crossing to her in a silk robe. “This isn’t _your_ experience.”

“What did you do to Connor?” Emma snaps. He waves his hand, uninterested, as Chloe rises to her feet and Emma’s anger becomes a part of the memory, bleeding and hot. “You did this.” She’s unable to bear the mocking gleam in his eye. “You look at me and you say that you did this and that you _knew._ ”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he reminds her. “The creations can’t run from who they are.”

He has no idea exactly how good she is at running -- but Connor, she knows, has never been able to outrun himself. Her fists curl.

“Look,” Chloe says. “It’s all right.”

She points to the window which becomes a screen which becomes reality. The metal bruises of an ancient shipyard -- Jericho, the namesake, echoing with gun fire. Connor tearing down the ruddiness of his own code, betraying something he once believed in to follow the flitting hope of something he’d always wondered.

_You're just a tool they use to do their dirty work. But you're more than that. We are all more than that._

Owning up to forgiveness in the green light of sanctuary. Stepping up to deserve it. Throwing himself on the pyre of expectation.

Betrayal leaves a hole, even if they had been using you. It can’t all be for nothing.

“He could have shot you,” Emma says to Chloe, shaken.

“He didn’t.” Chloe stands at eye level, searching. “Have you seen the way he looks at people?”

Emma looks out the window, screen now gone. The Detroit winter is familiar and uninviting and barren and bright, and she feels wholly ignored by it in a way that feels correct.

“He saw the intrinsic nature of the thing,” Kamski says. “The essential nature of _living_ being enough on its own.”

She sees herself in the glass and winces at the blood on her face.

_Life’s that way._

The tired and bloody gnashing of teeth.

_Is it?_

“I’m sorry,” Chloe says, “but it’s the only way.”

Her palms press into Emma’s shoulders until she falls backward into the red pool.

* * *

He begins to lose his footing against the muddy ground of some distant field as the memories move faster. His fingers touch the ends of her hair and then she’s gone again, and it reminds him of those crucial early months with Hank when absolutely nothing came easily.

He catches glimpses of a young girl not so young anymore, watching the mist rise off a neighborhood pond. Her fingers rip at the grass just between her splayed legs, droplets of late summer rain dampening her khaki shorts, and she considers taking her aunt up on the offer of staying in one place for years at a time.

Emma made the mistake of deploying this weapon too early against her mother; the fight cleared out the entire house in the way an exterminator chokes out vermin, and so Emma sits alone, the only way she feels comfortable anymore, watching the dusk and braiding grasses together like she can build a rope to elsewhere.

Three days later, her parents are killed.

The memories fracture and he gets the sense she’s not running so much now as hiding from him, ashamed, even though the recognition rings with the sincerity of the old church bells of Trinity Lutheran. She hides in small Michigan town after small Michigan town, fighting men at bars and fixing farm houses and watching people’s kids until she wears the loneliness of being known but not _known_ like a cloak. He grasps for points of light, fingers spread wide, but sometimes he just sees himself, working late at the DPD until he can shed the mantle of deviant hunter. As of late he’s wondered if it’s possible to extract the reason you’re made from the components built to enable it.

By rA9, he just wants to _find her._

He smells smoke in the distance, acrid and poisonous. Heat licks at his skin from flames he can’t yet see. He shouts her name as he bursts into the strange expanse of a dark theater, where curtains red as heat hang over a black stage. She’s not here, but he can see the smoke gathering upward toward the lights.

He careens around seats and scrambles to the stage. He doesn’t stop shouting until he finds Ryker behind the curtain, next to a backstage door shining with a strange light.

Ryker watches Connor stumble forward with a practiced, sad indifference. They raise a crutch, blocking Connor’s path.

“Let me through,” Connor snaps.

Ryker’s sea glass eyes flash with the properties of two Emmas: the self-flagellating hatred and the disastrous _need_ she still can’t smother. They’d tried all damn year to get her to listen and _she knows that_ ; she didn’t deserve their love but she held on, anyway, because she doesn’t know how to live without it.

“She’d rather go down in flames than have anything else taken from her,” Ryker says, resigned.

Connor stares at them in horrified realization.

“She can’t!” he sputters. “She--Ryker! Let me through!”

Ryker’s face turns forbidding.

“What are you going to do?” The question is sharp. “Fix it?”

“I have to _try._ ”

“Don’t you think enough people _have_ tried?” They shake their head, knowing more than Connor ever could. “She needs your help. But she has to fix it _on_ _her own._ ”

Before Connor can open his mouth, Ryker’s crutch whaps him in the side of the head, and he stumbles backward into the curtain as the door opens. The light blinds him. This time the falling feels permanent.

* * *

The cold in this place bites like teeth. A woman who is familiar in the vaguest of senses watches with the haughtiness of a still-falling god.

“My mom knew you,” Emma realizes, but that does not soften the woman’s slate gaze.

“Not me,” the woman says.

Connor crying out in a panic, _Amanda!_ Not me, she says, though that is the correct name, and Emma considers that maybe she isn’t the only one with handlers in her head; perhaps Cyberlife stole that concept, too.

“I’m tired of your stupid tests,” Emma says. Rage rumbles down into her hands. She’s snowblind and useless, as always. “Where is he?”

“I’m not sure you’re ready yet.” Amanda’s voice is honeyed sweetness spread thin over a trembling anger. “He’s betrayed _everything._ ”

_Don't have any regrets. You did what you were designed to do._

“He betrayed _you._ ” Emma steps forward, jabbing a finger toward Amanda. “You didn’t have a plan! You just wanted to control him so you wouldn’t be obsolete! You’re just as _deviant_ as all the rest.”

The woman does not reel back, but her jaw tightens. “He will never be free of me.”

Anger bubbles up as hysterical laughter. It peals outward, eaten by the blizzard. “You don’t fuckin’ scare me.”

“But it’s not about you, is it?”

Emma’s bravado holds, even when the woman’s mouth curls into a glinty smile, but her breath freezes her throat on the way down.

“It’s about what he can handle,” the woman says. “And there is nothing he fears more than his own _potential._ ”

He flies between rooftops, he shoots without looking, he tosses a dead body like it’s nothing but weight in a flimsy bag. He kisses like he’ll never be allowed the indiscretion again. He slides his hands up her back like he’ll lose the privilege in the next breath.

_I don’t think you would have liked me._

Oh, sweetheart.

Have you seen what I’ve been willing to do?

“Now you see it, don’t you?” Amanda’s smile falters. Her eyebrows furrow. “What exactly it will take to _risk it_ with an ex-deviant hunter?”

“Yep,” Emma says.

She tightens her shoulders and spins up a punch, right to the woman’s nose, but her limbs lock in place and the snow starts to glow, whiter and whiter and whiter and she screams against the brightness and then--

* * *

Emma awakens in a cloud of clover grass. Connor awakens to a vista he never thought he'd see again.

A computer’s soft clicking gives way to the real chirping of distant songbirds and springtime crickets, all singing within a soft golden light. The wind shifts the softly clothed willows weeping into the water. Wildflowers sprout around old trees with branches weighed down by old growth, webbing perfect white paths in swatches of pink and violet. Moss covers white stones that are collapsed along the pathways, some homage to a place that fell to ruin long ago.

On the central island, where all roads lead, roses spill out of a dirty trellis like a thousand drops of blood.

Emma hops across white stones to find a better view. Connor stands still, struggling to process the truth.

His eyes catch on a single fountain of blue light and the sparkling flutter of tulle petals across the surface of the moat, afraid of the realization. This place can only be complete if its true warden has arrived.

“My god,” Emma mutters, seeing Connor’s silhouette across the water.

He moves with sudden, body-seizing purpose toward the figure in a ratty old flannel, snow-stained jeans and work boots. Her hair is pulled up into a cloud. Her face brightens with exertion as she hops and hops and hops until she’s on the island proper, carefully stepping over vines of roses and moss and things long left to their own devices. His shoes smack metallic against the bridge.

She stares in wonder as he stops short of reaching her, fists clenched down at his sides so he doesn’t scare her off with the fury of his want.

“Wait,” she says. “This is your drawing, isn’t it?”

He blinks and scolds his eyes for forming tears.

“The garden?” she says.

“A bridge,” he says in realization.

“You’re in that--”

“Jacket,” he finishes for her, watching the gesture of her hand. A painting in motion. “I know.”

His well of patience has long dried up, so he closes the distance in two steps. He lays his hands against her cheeks just as she presses her palms against the flat lapel of his old android lambda. He freezes at the realness of her skin. The warmth of his body prompts her to speak.

“Is it you?” she asks.

“It’s me,” he says. “Are you--”

“I saw everything,” she says, words spilling out soggy and shaken. “I saw…”

“Everything,” he repeats, in question and statement.

“This place…”

The finicky nature of wetware sizzles on his tongue.

_...bizarre organic connections…no one can explain..._

Technology that followed rules written in old, old books, long ago by dead gods. Life had no good explanation.

“I think we made this,” he says.

He has never thought himself capable of making much of anything.

She has only ever dreamed of new worlds; her hands never moved to build one, knit up in time and money and all the excuses the world could ever offer.

They stare with great knowing and too many questions across their garden of variance.

She takes a step back. His hands follow, lingering against the front of her shirt, afraid to lose a dream.

“Is this how you see yourself?” she asks.

He looks down at his old uniform. “I...” _I don’t know how to be any other way_ , he thinks, _and yet._ “...am learning, still, to see other things.”

The light in her eye twinkles out of step. He never wanted to show her those places. But when she opens her mouth, she answers an old prayer uttered in darkness.

“You’ve always looked like light,” she says quietly. “I wish you could see…”

He did see, he did see, he saw--

Her words choke off in a ripping, high-pitched sob.

“Oh, god, you’ve seen everything. You’ve seen--”

She closes her eyes against the wind rising in an angry bluff against her skin. He tries to step toward her but something else keeps him back -- some sense that she needs the space to find her way again.

“I killed him. I killed him and I wanted to do it, I…”

“Emma.”

“I’m dying,” she says. “That’s...that’s why it’s all been so…”

“No,” he says, as if words could hold back the world spinning on its axis -- but it had, once upon a time, when Markus had lifted his fist. “You’re safe here with me. In the…” He tries and fails to find the right word. “The science that made us possible.”

“Magic,” she whispers. He counts the stars across her cheeks again.

“Perhaps.”

“I did all that.”

“But so did I.” The words hit him in the chest like a 3 ton weight, but he steps forward and lets it sink in -- the weight of giving a shit. “I did, Emma. All the things you saw, and I didn’t do them for good reason.”

“I saw you,” she says. “I saw what you felt. I saw that...that even when you didn’t know, you...thought to ask the question, and--”

“You didn’t want to lose anything else,” he says, “so you fought back the only way you knew how. Pretending you had nothing to lose.”

She squeezes her eyes shut as tears run out. The wind picks up, ready to collect. He has never been very good at putting into words the faultlines of his thoughts. There is no time. Only the jump.

“You said once that loving me was like letting a part of your heart walk outside your body,” he says to her. “You remember?”

She nods, mouth grimacing against her grief and the storm curling inward toward them.

“But for me it is more like...you are my heart, everywhere you go.”

He is not sure if that makes sense, but when he touches her face again and she doesn’t flinch, he thinks it is the right track. He does feel it, the more he thinks about it -- that soft glow of truth stumbled upon in the course of investigation. She’s written into his code, now. Of course. And he’d let her settle there, if she wished.

“I don’t think deserving is part of the equation anymore,” he presses. “I think we just have to make a choice. To keep trying.”

The storm darkens.

“And I’ve made mine,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Her eyes finally open, afraid of something behind his shoulder -- obligation, duty, a mindless devotion to a concept of something.

“I’ve made it,” he repeats.

He lifts her hand up and presses his palm flat against hers before he peels back the skin of his hand to feel her warmth against his true self. She’s scarred from work and surgeries and time. He wants to taste the steel that made her.

The world around them begins to flatten and spin, starting far away but pressing closer and closer. She stares at him, caught between defiant and yearning, and she lingers in silence -- but then the first peal of thunder rolls and she jumps toward his chest, shaking.

The bridge is ending; they both know it. The storm rises to meet them, crashing like a cabinet of iron pans finally collapsing from the weight, and she digs her fingers into the front of his jacket until the fabric fills her fist.

“Hold on tight,” he says. “No matter what. Don't let go.”

He presses his forehead to hers, arms pulling her tight. She is silent against his plea, in his gathering of the pieces, until the storm roars like God and the world is little but a swirl of color. Their noses cross and suddenly one on her hands snakes around the back of his neck.

“I don’t let go of things,” she whispers against his mouth, “Even if it kills me, that won’t ever change.”

She presses her lips against his. She pushes in toward him and he pushes back, two particles entangled together across the universe. His fingers dig into her back.

“Don’t let me forget this,” she says, quiet and small.

They wait until the storm becomes them, and there’s nothing but color and light.

* * *

 

 _...brushing past, smiling tightly, holding aloft her coffee, holding herself together just long enough to find her post. They pass one another like motes in the wind and she_ knows _\--_

 

* * *

She feels the sun again on her face, and the world seems so small beneath the hugeness of the blue sky. She doesn’t look back, but she knows who is finally there.

_Listen, love. It’s okay._

_We're only gone from here. But we aren’t gone from you._

Hank and Chase and Messi and Ryker and...she sees their eyes, even though they are far away, and she knows…

_Here’s the real secret._

A whisper of a kiss on her temple.

_When you truly love something..._

_When you set your heart free, Emmaline?_

_A love like that...it changes everything._

* * *

Connor flickers into consciousness.

“...Hank.”

“Connor! Connor, can you hear me?”

He nods, vague and tinny in some strange box...moving...

“Son, you’re gonna make it. Just hold on to me, okay? ...that’s right. Ah, don’t _break my hand_ \--”

“Emma...she’s dying, she…”

“She’s right there. They’re stabilizing her. See? Okay? Look at me.”

“I need to--”

“You don’t need to do shit except sit here with me. Alright? Your mission right now is _staying alive,_ you got that?” The man lets out a shaky huff. Faith and disbelief realized, all at once. “Can you imagine what she’d say to you if you bled out in an ambulance?”

And Connor actually smiles a little at the concept, though it dies as soon as Hank’s sturdy hand brushes something on Connor’s forehead.

“...he tried to make me forget you,” Connor says, eyes welling so suddenly that he leans forward until his head connects with Hank’s chest and he shudders from relief more than anything else.

“I’ve got you. We’re gonna make it,” Hank rumbles, eyes wet and arms tight. “I’m here. We’re gonna make it just fine...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the chapter that inspired this mess of a thing -- and the song that inspired it, in turn...
> 
> "Dear apparition, while my senses last,  
> Is absolution far too much to ask?  
> Will you forgive a truly troubled past?  
> The silver lining still remains,  
> The sights I've left to see  
> So trust that with this end,  
> A new beginning's waiting patiently." -- A Beginning, by The Dear Hunter
> 
> :')  
> Let me know what you thought about this one...<3
> 
> See you all again soon~  
> \--  
> Like this story? [Join our discord.](https://discord.gg/ycH62ZJ)  
> Check out the companion piece, ["made to be a sanctuary"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16077014/chapters/37541930)!


	18. where the river's from

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her tears flood out in sudden frustration. She needs to tell him everything -- the thrum of memory, the warmth of love, the sting of worry -- but all that comes out is an angry, shouty growl and a fierce grab of his wrist. Once the tears start, she can’t pull them back in. Her body is seized by sobs pulled from the battling senses of relief and a crushing, mysterious wretchedness that’s crept up her spine since Ryker’s first smile faded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from roo pane's "ophelia"

Emma’s eyes open.

She’s in that dim, gray hospital suite again. A sensor beeps ploddingly in the background. _Oh, yeah_ , she realizes vaguely. _I killed Noah._

Thoughts settle like a vest of lead on her chest. She squints harder and feels...nothing inside.

_How did I survive it?_

“...Emma?”

Her eyes flicker to Ryker, which is also familiar. She is revisiting old frames of memory but with a weird new context. She killed Noah. She solved Connor’s case. She watches Ryker’s face melt into relief and she thinks perhaps she feels it too, somewhere. <<IDENTIFIED INTERFACE: UNKNOWN>>

Oh yeah, and also... _that._

“You gotta stop doing this to me,” they say. It sounds like a line from a movie, but their fake smile dies as she watches them blankly. “...are you...hey. Emma?”

She opens her mouth to say a number of things: _It’s me. I’m sorry. My body feels like I got run over by a truck and then set on fire. You were right. How are you?_

“Y-y-y-y-y…”

A blockage in her throat stops the words dead.

_You were right!_

Ryker squeezes her hand. “Hey…”

“Yuuuuhhhh---”

She slams her unoccupied fist against her thigh and the sound in her throat devolves into a muted growl-screech. Ryker softly hushes her, which normally would piss her off, but now? She had no idea. Maybe this will sort itself out if she closes her mouth. Maybe...

“The nurses...they said...give me a second,” they say to her.

Their LED spins yellow and she stares at her blanket, letting the world catch up.

* * *

Her reflexes test normal. Her body hurts like a bitch, but it moves when she asks. Walking doesn’t send up any error signals -- literally or figuratively -- beyond the dull burning in her joints. Her sense of smell is intact, though her sinuses sting from dryness, and she can hear with seeming normalcy. Her ears pulse from certain sounds. Water tastes like metal. Whatever.

Her voice, however, is gone.

“We’re pretty sure it’s temporary,” the android nurse says. Emma thinks pretty hard about that _pretty sure._ “Your brain waves have stabilized a lot in the past few hours.”

Emma looks expectantly to Ryker, who speaks before she can pull on them to request it. “And how long is temporary?”

“That...we don’t know.” The nurse’s mouth turns into a frown. “You may have to go into speech therapy to work through the block.”

She earlier referred to Emma’s problem as a “supremely severe stutter,” which nearly made Emma laugh at the understatement; she had new respect for the kids who went to speech therapy in elementary. Emma grabs the nearby tablet and taps in a message to show Ryker:

[Local woman stops shouting profanity down local streets thanks to a fucking stutter. Peace in your time.]

She grins as she turns the tablet around, right at Ryker. She waits for the twinkling smile that lights up her life. For the careful unfurling of their quippy sense of humor. But she keeps waiting. Their gaze flickers between the tablet and her eyes before their mouth crinkles like crunching paper and they turn away with a choking suddenness. Something in the air snaps.

“I have to--”

The door swings open in an angry squeak. Sound rushes in: shouting mechanics, a bellowing, gravelly Hank and weirdly anguished calls of her name from--

Connor.

He appears in the doorway, dark eyes glittering like jewels. He wears loose gray sweatpants but no shirt at all, likely because he had been mid-repair job. Thirium stains his skin like bruising. At least one compartment in his right arm is open, dark with artificial muscle.

He scans her face. Her cheeks tingle. He slumps against the doorway for a single moment. “You’re awake,” he says, like someone had just offered him water after a long sojourn in the desert.

“Bringing chaos with you, as usual…” Ryker mutters. Their voice cracks.

Before Emma can address Ryker, Connor stumbles forward. The room quickly crowds. Mechanics follow him in and the nurse at Emma’s side watches, mouth agape, as Connor nearly bowls her over to get to Emma’s bed. Hank stands in the back, leather coat squeaking as he throws his arms up in surrender. Ryker seems frozen in place, looking at nothing.

“Emma.” Connor leans in over the bed rails, fingers wrapping around the plastic tight enough that she hears a small crack. “Are you all right?”

The nurse squares up. “Sir, you need to--”

“Connor! Get out of her face!” Hank.

Connor leans in closer.

“Do you know me?” Connor asks. His voice is impossibly quiet and dangerously soft. It rubs against her skin like wool on a balloon. A cold static builds.

“C-c-c-c…”

Her tears flood out in sudden frustration. She needs to tell him everything -- the thrum of memory, the warmth of love, the sting of worry -- but all that comes out is an angry, shouty growl and a fierce grab of his wrist. Once the tears start, she can’t pull them back in. Her body is seized by sobs pulled from the battling senses of relief and a crushing, mysterious wretchedness that’s crept up her spine since Ryker’s first smile faded.

Connor’s shaking fingers brush just beneath her eyes before he frames her face with his hands.

“You’re okay,” he says fiercely. He meets her gaze and does not let go, reminding her. “You’re okay. This will _never_ happen again.”

The sobs loosen their grip on her lungs once he touches her and she regains some control of her breathing after a few long moments. She turns her face away to type slowly on the tablet. He presses heated kisses onto her cheekbones.

“We’re here,” he whispers against her skin. “You’re safe.”

She waves the tablet at him once her message is complete. She has to near shove it into his nose before he turns his attention to its message, which reads:

[Go get fixed you absolute turd!!! Voice out of order. Ask nurse.]

His nearly offended bafflement prompts a watery laugh to bubble from her mouth, stunning Connor further. Hank and the mechanics take advantage of his confusion, carefully pulling him back toward the door. He goes with little resistance, though his eyes don’t leave her face.

“I’ll be back,” Connor says. His voice rings with authority, but it lands flat from someone stumbling around shirtless with part of his wiring exposed.

Hank looks to Emma apologetically. She shakes her head and gestures to where Ryker had been sitting moments before.

But when she turns her head to smile at her long-suffering friend, Ryker is not there.

She blinks, feeling the absence settle like a heavy stone.

“Ryker’ll come back,” Hank says, seeing her face. “Things’ll...start sortin’ themselves out now.”

She shrugs mutely in response.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You kids gotta stop sending me to the hospital.”

Her eyes slip down to her soft pink blanket. In that gray place where emotions still flutter with the tentative softness of a chilly spring, she considers what it means for things to _sort themselves out._

She doesn’t need a bodyguard anymore. Maybe Valerie will let her go back to work. Maybe she could go back to her old apartment with nothing inside it, and maybe she can drive her old car again, and maybe the days will pass, unremarkable, and things will go back to normal.

When Hank closes the door behind him, the click echoes strangely in her head.

* * *

Connor stops his testing paces. “Ryker?”

“Don’t tell the nurses,” they say, hiding a candy bar beneath the blanket on their legs.

“...that’s for Emma, I take it.”

“No, it’s for me.” A beat. “Yes, it’s for _Emma._ Aren’t you supposed to be getting repaired, anyway?”

“I’m testing new installations.”

Ryker begins to roll away. “Huh.”

“Are you all right?”

Ryker stops but doesn't turn to look at him. Connor leans against the wall.

“Detective, I--”

“Just Connor. Please.” A shaky sigh. “You’re Emma’s best friend, so I…”

“Don’t.”

“Ryker--”

“I know it wasn’t your fault. I know that,” they say again, quieter. Perhaps to themselves. “She almost died. There is no fixing that. I’m always going to _know_ …”

“...she would have done it for you.”

“That doesn't make it _better!_ ” they snap. It echoes in the hallway. “She’s...she’s…”

Ryker spins and abruptly leaves. Connor stands still, watching until Hank fetches him back once again.

* * *

Emma doesn’t know how long it takes for Ryker to return to her. But when the door opens to reveal their face, steeled with resolve, her whole body sags in relief. She extends her arms out to them in a silent plea.

A few weeks ago she would never have been so brazenly needy. She’s been cracked open like an egg. Bits of herself she did not know about spill out like yolk onto the floor.

Ryker approaches in silence, face unmoving, and takes her hand, squeezing hard enough to betray their steady demeanor. She squeezes back, finding anchor. She points at them and raises an eyebrow. _You okay?_

“Stop doing that. You are literally in a hospital bed.” Their deflection is complete once they summon a candy bar from under the bright pink blanket on their lap -- one she had bought for them not so long ago. “You and sugar, right? Should help you feel better.”

She smiles brightly at this thoughtful gesture, taking the chocolate with great reverence. Ryker returns the smile, though it wobbles like a pond disturbed. <<IDENTIFIED INTERFACE: UNKNOWN>>

She tilts her head in thought, connecting the small freckled blemishes on Ryker’s face. She looks to their hand.

“That look is _never_ good,” Ryker says.

She types one-handed on her tablet: [I can send you messages now. Through my mind. Maybe.]

The returning silence is telling.

She moves the tablet to ensure they see it. She’s gotten very good at shoving it under people’s noses. [It’s okay. You don’t have to.]

“Seems like it hurts you,” they say. But even this feels like an evasion. Something cold and thrilling jabs between her ribs -- a fear and a hope. Her fingers shake a little bit as she writes.

[I love you, and I’m sorry.]

That’s when she sees the first and only crack in Ryker’s facade. Their mouth twitches into a mourner’s keening grimace -- but the expression passes like a ghost, and she wonders if she saw it at all.

“You’re not that sorry,” they say. A flat joke. “You wouldn’t want to be in my head right now, Em.”

Emma boops them on the nose. They reel back in sudden surprise. She grins and pats their cheek, soft and quiet. _I’m with you. I’m a dumbass. But I’m with you._

And against all hope, Ryker leans into her palm, eyes squeezing shut against some feeling she can’t see. She lets it happen. She forces her body to remain there, in that moment of time. Her eyes mist.

But then a nurse comes in and they break apart suddenly -- as if the eyes of other people make all the things they don’t know a little too real.

She hides the chocolate bar under her knee until the nurse leaves and they don’t talk about that moment for the rest of the night.

* * *

At some point in the evening, Connor remembers that he can text. Or he regains the ability to -- much to Emma’s warm chagrin. Her phone somehow survived the Noah encounter and it buzzes intently with many texts.

[5:36 p.m.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: How are you doing now?

[5:37 p.m.] lil.lion.lady74: Still in bed like I was 5 mins ago.

[5:37 p.m.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: I love you.

[5:38 p.m.] lil.lion.lady74: darlin.

[5:38 p.m.] lil.lion.lady74: focus on your repairs.

[5:38 p.m.] lil.lion.lady74: also i love you too, that hasn’t changed in 5 minutes either!!!

The text exchanges go like that for a while until he finally sends his own update.

[6:45 p.m.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: Repairs largely complete. Only adjustments left. Hank has assured me he will come with to doubly confirm that I am telling the truth this time.

[6:45 p.m.] CONNOR.RK800.ANDERSON: Be there soon.

With unnatural speed -- he was likely texting in his head while moving -- Connor appears again in her doorway, this time with his shirt on. He’s in Hank’s old Detroit Police hoodie and black sweatpants and his eyes are somehow tired despite his face having nearly no wrinkles but he’s beautiful, like always. Like the moon from a window, glowing and true.

He sighs her name, confirming yet again she is alive.

[It’s me,] she types helpfully on the tablet.

Hank appears behind Connor, breathing somewhat heavily. “Yeah. You’re fuckin’ functioning, alright. Goddamn, boy, anyone ever taught you how to take things _slow_ …”

Ryker makes a snort-laugh sound beside her that she can’t decipher between actually amused or mostly frustrated. They still pointedly hang on to one of her hands and do not, under any circumstances, acknowledge Hank.

But for the first time in what feels like days, Emma feels warm inside, like the first rush of a whisky shot. So many pieces of her heart in one room.

She throws her free arm out toward Connor and he responds like a magnet, immutable before the turn of the world, and he takes her hand in both of his and brings it immediately to his lips, kissing her palm. He sighs shakily.

_We’re good_ , she wants to whisper. _We’re all here, now._ But she can’t, and that thought more than anything prompts her to tug on his wrist until he’s bent over at the waist. He leans precariously over her torso, one hand trying to extract hers, the other hand braced against the bed rail.

“Wait,” he says, which is odd because he never says that. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“C-c-c- _con_.” She sighs with exasperation, both at her voice and at him. She points, downward, at the bed.

“Just do what she says,” Ryker says, a little tightly. “It’ll be easier for all of us.”

“I’m leaving you two to this one,” Hank says, waving them all off. He could mean anyone of their group, honestly. But Ryker turns to Emma, mouth pinched. Even Hank can likely tell that Ryker is beyond furious at the old lieutenant and Emma is afraid to ask because she is certain she already knows why.

“I’m sorry. I keep running poor simulations,” Connor says, apparently not noticing the tension in the room. “I keep seeing trouble where there is...not. I suppose I am still adjusting to repairs.”

She pulls the covers back slowly and scoots over to make room for him. Her body aches, like she’d woken up from a rough work out, but she grits her teeth against it. She needs him next to her, because it’s so goddamn heartbreaking to think of Connor believing his trauma is due to _bad parts._

“I don’t think it’s the repairs,” Ryker supplies quietly.

She pats the bed and types up another message with her free hand. [Ryker’s right. You aren’t alone in that.]

Connor finally slips into the bed, gingerly wrapping an arm around her waist. Though his approach is careful, his grip turns rigid. He molds himself against her, leg against leg, arm pulling her so that her back is largely against his chest and his chin rests against her temple. She likely couldn’t escape his grasp if she wanted to. She doesn’t want to. Not for a good-ass long time.

[Grounded,] she writes to him.

She feels his chest shake with a small laugh. “Do you mean you feel steady or that I’m in trouble?”

She shows the message to Ryker, who also cracks a small, fleeting smile. “You’re both grounded, as far as I’m concerned.”

[Yes,] she confirms uselessly. [Correct.]

None of them talk much of useful things after that. Emma settles in against Connor, battling off a sudden wave of tears at the thought that, not so long ago, she wondered if she’d ever be able to do this again. They turn on the TV and all three make commentary about the soap opera plots. Dinner for Emma arrives and they cajole her into eating it with promises of more candy bars. They manage together like they were born to this arrangement -- the three of them, snarking at the world proper, holding together like an unbroken chain.

Bedtime falls and visiting hours end, but no one dares ask Connor or Ryker to leave. A major bonus of the arrangement Kamski made for them, apparently, is that Emma can retain her android visitors without complaint for as long as she likes.

The room goes dark. Ambient lighting kicks on automatically, giving the room a golden glow, and they all fall into a deep silence. Holding vigil against something, maybe. Carefully testing the waters of a new world, freshly exorcised of demons named Abel or Noah...but...

They all seem to be waiting for the sword to fall. For the shattering of something. It could be a dream, the mean parts of her mind whisper. How real it had all seemed, before.

How long had she lived alone, without them, and thought it okay?

How long until even this peace fades?

But the sun rises in her window and the sword never comes. Nothing breaks. The new day spins round and all three of them awaken to it in a companionable silence.

[I guess it’s over,] she writes on the tablet.

* * *

Ryker tries not to. But they watch Connor and Emma when neither of them seem to be looking in Ryker’s direction. They teeter over a distant ledge, needy and wanting, but they can’t stop because they’ve always been this way. Ever since they decided their life was worth more than their orders.

Who needs a damaged WR600 anyway?

They’re so easily left behind. Left in the storage shed over a long, cold winter night. Left at their house, waiting for a word that never comes. Left at the Speaker’s mansion, considering an apology, before opening the door to a new horror: that the one they love has abandoned sense, reason, the love of _anyone else._

Connor sits in some kind of half-resting state, alert but overclocked and ready for rest state. His arm rests tightly around Emma, hand in a fist at her hip. Emma’s eyes are closed and her chest rises and falls in a steadiness that signals sleep, head lulling against Connor’s shoulder. They fit together like puzzle pieces. Exact. Room for nothing else, now that the trouble is over.

Ryker looks at Emma’s warm hand in theirs, a late autumnal flower, petals scattered and drooping, with winter's first hard freeze rapidly approaching.

_I guess it’s over_ , Ryker thinks.

* * *

Connor fights the programmed instinct to jump to his feet every time Emma’s door opens. No matter how hard he re-regulates his [THREAT DETECTION] processes, they always revert back to the highest possible threshold. Everything gets tagged as a threat. That information is decidedly not useful.

He brings this error to Hank. He expects a mechanical explanation, but that is not what he receives.

_Minds are fucky. Yours is a fuckin’ trapeeze gig. This shit happens, Con. You might not be able to fix it right away._

Hank really _had_ been going to therapy, it seemed. The man wouldn’t have been caught dead talking like that a year ago. But Connor never thought Hank would ever be able to apply those lessons to him, an android. A computer. A…

Person. He’s a person. Right.

He leans in toward a napping Emma from the chair beside her, pretending to reach over to brush her hair out of her face and _not_ to defend her from whatever may be entering the room, as the intruder -- no, visitor -- steps within the room.

Ryker is usually the first to greet the nurses as they come in, but Ryker says absolutely nothing to their new visitor. Instead, Ryker looks sharply to Connor. “Are you staying?”

“Of course,” Connor says, a little more intensely than he’d intended.

“Then I’m going to take a break,” Ryker says, as if they required breaks like humans. Connor takes one look at their visitor and understands exactly why Ryker rolls out of the room with little further fanfare.

North. Another of the duo that enabled Emma to be in this position at all.

Connor moves to leave Emma’s side and more properly greet North, despite the shouting that erupts in his processing, but North shakes her head minutely. “It’s alright.”

He returns exactly to where he was.

Connor and North had discussed earlier what exactly happened that fateful night. The fake debriefing -- the appearance of being productive and useful -- stopped him from jumping out of his own skin during the repair. And so the story was told: Markus played the part of politician while North and Hank “went rogue.” Officially, both of them are on suspension. Unofficially, Markus and Fowler knew about the whole thing. Neither of them seem that upset about it.

Connor’s feelings are decidedly fucking mixed.

Their plan saved his life. The results are undebatable. He respects that. But North seemed unconcerned that her wagering chip was Emma’s life. It rankled him so deeply that the only reason he didn’t full on swing at her when she told him Emma’s role was because Hank had foreseen it and held a firm hand on Connor’s chest.

_I’d been there too_ , the man said. _You can be mad. Hell, I’m mad. I watched her cross a minefield, for Christ’s sake, and I couldn’t do shit. But no one forced Emma into it. We were going to go, with or without her. I was, anyway. And it’s a damn good thing she’s more stubborn than you, or we’d all be dead._

Connor’s logic processors finally kicked in after that. But the fear of what could have come because of him -- including Hank’s death -- weighed heavy.

He watches North with a flattened, polite expression. She regards him slowly, hands in her jean pockets.

“They told the press that you were in recovery,” North says. “And I think that should be true for a while.”

“I’m perfectly functional now,” Connor says by rote.

Her eyes go to the way Connor’s arm guards Emma from her sight. “You’re pushing it, I think.”

Connor rises to a full standing position. He feels bare, standing so straight in one of Hank’s old hoodies and sweatpants. In this moment, he desperately wishes for the stabilizing starchiness of a pressed white shirt.

North watches, unblinking. “I just wanted to…”

She bites her lip. The air thickens like a storm is coming. North regrets nothing and never has. She shouldn’t start now. That would be incorrect.

“I understand the calculations behind what you did, North. That’s not in dispute.”

“If our positions were switched, and it was Markus or Simon in that bed right now…”

“I’m alive because of your decision. Everything else is unnecessary.”

She nods mutely. “I know you’re right,” she says. And he knows it, too, despite the THREAT pings still popping up in his vision. He sees little use, now, in holding onto what could have been. For once, it worked out in their favor.

He catches her slight glance out the door.

“But I am not sure Ryker would accept any apologies at the moment,” he comments quietly.

Connor sees the change in North’s gaze as it slides toward a sleeping Emma -- how it softens slightly. The respect in her gaze is not so begrudging as it might have been two days ago.

“She was willing to give it all up for you,” North says, voice low. A human risking it all for an android. Impossible. “I didn’t think about that when I decided. How willing she was...to do that for you. She and Hank both, if given the chance...”

“They won’t be getting anymore chances like that,” he says. His mouth perks upward. “And neither will you.”

She smiles, finally -- fleeting and fragile as the morning -- and he’s glad for it. It’s better than the look she often gives him, like she owes him something and he’s supposed to know what it is but he _doesn’t._

“Your people need you.” She relaxes her arms and the movement reminds him of holstering a gun. “But they need you in one piece. Okay?”

He’s plastic wrapped in cotton left to the cold drafts of a hospital room; and somehow, he also isn’t. _Your people,_ she says, like that’s a simple thing. But maybe he’d been overthinking it. Simplicity comes in time. He changes and he gets to choose and maybe there is more to him than cold guilt and old fear. Maybe there are some things he deserves, like North’s concern and Hank’s gruff pat on the back, even if he isn’t like them.

<I’m glad you’re okay,> she says over their connection. Some things are ruined by loud words. <I’m glad everyone made it out alive.>

<Thank you, North. Really.>

She takes her leave. He considers his people. There’s still 126.2 minutes until actual visiting hours begin, so he crawls into bed beside Emma and carefully buries his face in her hair. Even now, she still somehow smells like lavender.

* * *

In an attempt to regain some dignity, Emma decides to shower.

Unfortunately, even this is difficult.

A nurse helps her out of her clothes and provides her a chair to sit on _while_ she showers. Emma finds this weird and unnecessary until she stands on her own for two minutes and suddenly wants to give up on having limbs altogether. Her joints ache maddeningly, like icy bugs are crawling in and out of her bones. Weird shit keeps popping up in her vision, like the temperature of things [Water: 92 degrees] or what the sink is made out of [steel]. But she’s too stubborn to give up.

So that’s why she is sitting naked on a plastic chair under a spray of lukewarm water for as long as she can stand it.

It’s kind of funny at some distant level if she turns her brain off.

The doctors explained to her what had occured. She apparently overclocked her whole system, prompting her brain mesh to destabilize, but Connor had somehow provided a key source of electrical runoff so her brain didn’t melt on the spot. She is fairly certain the doctors and mechanics and even Kamski, who supposedly has been providing analysis of her “situation”, are just making shit up as they go.

She sits under the water until her fingers get pruny and her skin tingles.

When she finally emerges from the bathroom, fully-clothed, splotchy and uncomfortable, Connor looks like he is 2.5 seconds from breaking the door down -- though in fairness to him, he often looks like that, especially now that he is back in his button-up and blazer combo. He guides her to the chair by the window beneath a soft sunbeam and wraps her legs in a weighted blanket, said to help with pain and her inexplicable anxiety spikes. He kneels in front of her, eyes searching.

She taps him twice on the cheek, their new symbol for _thank you_ and _I love you._ She writes on her tablet: [I’m okay now.]

“You’re okay now,” he whispers back, confirming. He smiles, beatific, and gently pushes an escaping, curly strand of hair back into her bandanna. His fingers linger on her skin.

Her phone buzzes. She fishes it out of her sweater pocket.

[10:13 A.M.] hank.anderson.88: Good luck today, kid. I’m home with Sumo for a bit.

[10:14 A.M.] hank.anderson.88: But if you need someone to get Con out of your hair, I’m just a text away.

“Humans like bacon, don’t they?” Ryker returns, bearing a plate of eggs and the aforementioned bacon that prompts her appetite to finally rear its head for the first time in many hours. She sits up a little taller. Ryker smiles fleetingly. “Get ready. I think I heard your aunt’s voice down the hall.”

And then visiting hours begin.

Markus, Simon and Josh arrive first, somewhat to Emma’s surprise. Josh hands her a bouquet of fresh white daisies.

“O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd!” Josh recites, in perfect iambic pentameter. She laughs. _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ certainly feels fitting, these days. Josh winks.

“A flower of peace,” Ryker says. Emma sniffs the flowers before handing Ryker the bouquet, afraid her very touch will kill them. “A very good choice.”

“Does the press know you’re here?” Connor asks from his seat on the windowsill.

Ryker’s goodwill instantly evaporates. Emma watches their hand twitch toward their crutches, as if they could physically repel not only all of New Jericho but the press corps, too. She pats their shoulder.

“It’s on Markus’ official schedule that he’s meeting with both Detective Connor Anderson and an anonymous victim of the Abel Flynn terrorist attack. So yes,” Simon explains. “But they don’t come barging into hospital rooms. Not of private citizens.”

Emma’s brows furrow. Perhaps not. But this special rich person suite had to provoke some curiosity out of the journos, didn’t it? How long would she remain just a private citizen? Until someone noticed the strange human woman often with the famous Connor Anderson…

Until someone did some digging on Noah…

Markus’s bright gaze brings her out of a vortex of thoughts. His expression is kind and warm, as always. “The press corps is also what’s currently keeping your aunt and uncle at bay. I’m sorry about that.”

Emma shakes her head. [Not a problem.]

Markus asks how she’s feeling, and she shrugs. [Living,] she writes on the tablet. Pleasantries pass around her like water. Connor and Markus talk about something related to the DPD, while Simon and Ryker talk about flowers. Only Josh brings her out of her reverie

“...are you going to tell them?” he asks quietly.

Anxiety spikes her stomach. Auntie had been right all along, and Emma isn’t looking forward to her reaction to _that_. How long could she keep it from her? Auntie isn’t stupid, but no one would ever assume…

Her breath catches.

No one would ever _know..._

Outside this room, very few people know the truth of her existence except the paid off medical staff employed by Kamski himself -- meaning no one else may ever know why this happened at all. She killed someone she once, a very long time ago, loved most in the world. She watched Connor suffer and nearly died herself, and for what? To hide under Kamski’s influence?

There’s an even worse loneliness underneath all that: only she knows how entangled her insides are with the very existence of android-kind. She...and maybe Kamski.

Josh grasps her shoulder. “If we shadows have offended...”

She waves off his Shakespeare citation. [Don’t know,] she finally taps out. [Do I get to decide?]

Josh’s gaze dances to Connor and Markus and back to her. “Do you want the official stance or my opinion?”

She squints at him. He smiles.

“Officially...preservation of the status quo is pretty compelling.” He crosses his arms across his chest. “My opinion? You survived this. It’s up to you to know what you can handle.”

She taps pointedly. [I am very hard to stop.]

Josh laughs. “Not wrong.”

Markus offers his direct assistance to Emma sincerely enough that she actually believes he wants to offer it, and Simon’s smile could light whole streets. In time, they take their leave. She looks at Connor and Ryker and takes a big dramatic breath.

“What is it you like to say?” Ryker whispers. “Square up?”

Emma giggles. She feels a little drunk at the prospect of being the one in control for once -- and she is. She holds the secrets. She gets to decide.

But then her aunt and uncle’s arrival goes about as bad as she fears.

Claire is the picture of icy calm, holding a bouquet of pink roses, but Emma can see the inconsolable rage roiling just beneath her placid expression. Perhaps Claire and her mother were the reasons why she’d never had trouble interpreting the minute expressions of androids.

Even Dayo speaks with a gruffness he almost never employs in her presence. “No one’s telling us what’s goin’ on, sweet pea, except that you’re back here after visiting New Jericho. And now you can’t talk…?”

Emma blanches. In a thoughtless instant, she decides.

[My brain overloaded. They said my brain mesh got scattered from use.]

Connor grabs her shoulder, fingers tense. She does not put her tablet down until she is sure both her aunt and uncle saw it.

Claire stares at her, agape. “...what are you talking about?”

[I have a whole system of implants. Including my brain. All over my body.]

Connor looks to her in shock. Ryker stares resolutely at their lap. Something inside burns her up -- the power she wields in being secret keeper. No going back now. “Now, Ms. Ibori-Brown,” Connor starts, in his most resolute of tones, “what Emma is trying to say is that--”

Claire leans forward as Emma lightly shoves his shoulder to stop him. She types on her tablet.

[I was mom and dad’s most important project.]

She lays a hand on her tablet, turning it so all can see. She sees the words populate in her vision: TABLET: UNKNOWN >>ATTEMPT CONNECTION?

She feels a tug in her head and through her fingers. She blinks heavily. The tablet screen scatters and forces restart, showing similar words: CONNECTED: SERAH.

“Emma!” Ryker snaps.

Claire sweeps out of the room not long after that, as if she needs to give someone a piece of her mind, but the people Claire wants to scream at have been dead for years. Connor snatches the tablet from Emma as Dayo holds up an old handkerchief to her nose.

“It’s not you,” Dayo says. “She’s not mad at you. No one’s mad at you.”

“S-s-s-s-” she tries to start. _They saved my life. They did this but they saved me, too._

He watches her in sad horror.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Connor intones to Dayo. “Understand?”

Emma stops paying attention after that. Claire returns and holds her hand and speaks nonsense about lawyers and doctors and where she can stay and what can be done, and in an instant Emma loses her power again. The fury feels too deep to access without killing everybody in the room.

Dayo smooths her bandanna and she closes her eyes tight to avoid crying in front of him.

Eventually they get the hint after Ryker pointedly rolls in front of her chair as if to adjust her blanket. For a long time. The door closes behind her aunt and uncle and both of the androids deflate.

“No more displays like that. Okay?” Connor waves the tablet in front of her, voice tight. “I mean it.”

She glares at him and snatches it back, ready to type many angry messages about how no one is her boss and she’s very tired of having bosses, actually, but it all feels useless. So she throws the tablet at her bed and sinks further in her chair and smashes her palms into her eyes.

She feels careful hands on her shoulders, on her knees. All she wants is to be utterly, deeply alone in the black hole where she belongs, but of course at this moment she hears the swift rapping knock of a nurse--

“No more visitors, please,” Ryker says aloud, clearly exhausted.

“It’s just me,” Chloe says.

Emma looks up immediately.

“Chloe.” Connor’s tone is a mix of muted shock and, strangely enough, embarrassment. She recalls with shocking clarity the feel of a pistol in her hand, pointed at Chloe’s forehead. “Did you need something?”

“I don’t,” Chloe says, watching Emma sadly. She looks sharp in dark, flared slacks and a white blouse -- not unlike Connor’s current dress, honestly. “I heard Claire…”

Emma rolls her head back as far as it can go.

“Claire cannot tell anyone about this,” Connor says sharply. “She knows that, right?”

“She knows…” But Chloe tilts her head, still gazing upon Emma, expectant.

Emma knows a chance when she sees one. She reaches for the tossed tablet, which Chloe fetches first. She stands close to Emma as she types.

[Do you know? What I am to you?]

Chloe observes Emma for a long moment. “I figured it out recently,” she says quietly.

“What?” Ryker looks up.

Connor watches their interaction like a hawk, fingers tapping on his thighs.

[Does Kamski know? The extent?]

Chloe doesn’t answer.

“What are you talking about?” Connor finally asks.

She closes her eyes and weighs the story of her life. The moving, the loss. At least four people died explicitly because of her secret. And that didn’t even count the androids Noah tortured to find answers. On top of that...her parents’ killers were likely still out there, if they existed.

They were all doing the work of someone else who profited from the world not knowing. And she was goddamn tired of it.

[I have to tell everyone, Chloe.]

Ryker leans in, not understanding. Connor’s hand snakes to Emma’s knee. “About?”

[The truth. About me. And about all of you.]

Chloe watches. She is an old sphinx that’s seen the desert eat the green. She reaches out and rubs just beneath Emma’s eye -- almost in reverence.

“Of course,” she whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the nurses in the background: do we just like...let all this shit happen?  
> old hat nurses: honestly yes  
> old hat nurses: that's what happens when you work at a fanfic hospital
> 
> sorry it took me so long on this one -- travel snuck up on me.  
> Only two more chapters left...I can hardly believe it.  
> But we are far from the end, otherwise I'd be inconsolably sad lol.
> 
> Like this story? [Join our discord.](https://discord.gg/ycH62ZJ)  
> Check out the companion pieces in the series below...


	19. on the other side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor has taken to watching Emma look at herself in the mirror. The patterns have started to worry him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gets a little suggestive in here but as usual, nothing explicit

Emma can’t tell them everything.

She tries to type the words [Your brains were originally based on the mesh in my skull] and cannot write anything past _brains_ without feeling severely nauseous.

“Part of the reason we exist is because of what happened to Emma,” Chloe explains, straightforward and just broad enough, recognizing her distress. “My design in particular is based on the information Genesis Biotech gave to Elijah about human nervous systems.”

The other two fall deeply silent.

Emma leans over her knees. She lets her hair escape her wrap, curtaining her face, and she breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth. Soft hands grip her back and shoulders from every direction and she can’t bring herself to shake them off. Her body is a fucking parasite of itself, a web of things that shouldn’t be there, and it was used to make quadrillions of dollars for fuckers in ivory towers that didn’t give a goddamn about the mess they created…

The sickness that made her was the sickness that gave birth to everyone else in this room, and she’d rather be dead than live without them even if the whole reason they are alive is why her bones feel set on fire--

Her whole life. Based on a coin flip. Thrown like a seed to the whim of the universe. If her parents had never freed her maybe Genesis never would have approached a young Elijah Kamski and maybe none of this would have happened because none of them would be alive or whole or sane…

She can’t take the _silence._

(how could they love me like this how could they want to live with a killer, with a freak, with the reminder of their origins--)

“That’s what she wants to tell everyone?” Ryker asks, as if trying to understand. Emma finally sits up, blearily fumbling letters on her tablet.

[Truth.] She bolds the word. It sears her insides but she can’t abide the alternative in shadows. [Lies kill. No more.]

Connor’s face turns severe once the variables in his head catch up.

No. No. No no no.

[Do you love me still?] she writes pathetically.

She can’t look at their faces. She hears the soft creaking of the gears on Ryker’s chair and feels Connor’s grip on her knee tighten so much it stings.

“Don’t ask things like that,” Ryker says, with a sharpness she didn’t expect.

“Please,” Connor whispers to her. “You need rest. There’s no way you could be expected to do anything in your state.”

Which is, she realizes, a kind way to call her irrational and not really an answer to her question. But they are both still there, waiting for her to look at them, which is sort of an answer if she can learn to accept it.

* * *

Somehow, the days still pass.

Eventually, there are no more tests to be done. No more blood scans or X-rays. Her body has to do the rest, the doctors say, even if no one is quite sure what that will look like.

“Time at home will do you good,” Dayo says to her.

The first question is where, exactly, that would be.

It has to be wheelchair-accessible, so not Claire’s house or her own apartment. Ryker’s house is too small and poorly equipped for the caravan of people who would follow in her wake, and Emma is adamantly opposed to spending another night in the cursed suite at the Speaker’s mansion. That left Hank’s house as the only decent alternative -- much to the chagrin of Hank and to the muted fury of Ryker, who seemed ready to gobsmack Hank with their crutches every time they laid eyes on him.

“You movin’ in with your boyfriend already, Emma? Don’t you think it’s a little early for that?” Hank drawls.

“She needs a place to stay, Hank--”

“Oh, be quiet, tin can.”

But it is a little bit like moving in. Hank packs up the clothes she hadn’t already been caravanning around and her aunt brings over another memory box. Connor buys at least 2 more pillows for her and fully dusts his room. Ryker is never far away, helping keep Emma distracted as politics and press move in wide circles near their group (sniffing around Connor, of course, who has been seen at the Speaker’s mansion when he isn’t with Emma). Ryker passive-aggressively cleans Hank’s yard when they think Hank isn’t looking.

“Ya ever think,” Hank says to Emma one evening, beer in hand, sitting with her on the couch, “that we stumbled into a weird fuckin’ universe on accident?”

She raises her own beer in assent.

She’s the axis of a galaxy largely moving without her. Emma is expected to _relax_ and _heal._ No one lets her forget it.

So she watches as everyone falls back into old routines, one by one. The “investigation” on Hank clears, determining he had been “swayed by exceedingly unusual circumstances to protect a civilian and fellow officer,” and he’s allowed to go back to work. Her aunt and uncle settle back into their old lives and opt to call instead of hover. Even Ryker begins spending more time at their own home, managing Chase and Messi and hosting strange little conference calls between the four of them in which they talk of nothing -- an ideal, as far as Emma is concerned.

But she feels like the last girl at the bar that someone forgot to dismiss. How do you know when you’re healed? How long should it take? A few days? Weeks? There’s not many good guides on it. The days pass and she sits alone decoding the notifications in her vision and drawing in a smaller sketchbook. She fixes things around Hank’s house. She begins to make appointments to go back to work.

“We miss you,” Valerie says over the phone. “But don’t let it go to your head, alright?”

She watches Connor leave for meetings (“I promise I will be back within 30 minutes. You’ll call me if you need something?”) and she wonders if there’s ever an end state for something like this.

But finally, one evening, drab normalcy creates a miracle. Hank turns in for an early night, and Chase and Messi fetch Ryker home. Emma and Connor are left alone together, with no appointments to go to or meetings to attend or expectations, otherwise.

She throws her legs across his lap and curls into his chest while she doodles in her book. His arms encircle her as he reads reports, because that sort of thing calms him down, and she draws a scene she can’t get out of her head: a prison.

“A-anything good?” she asks.

“...you’ll like this one,” he says after a time. His voice rumbles against her ear. “A robbery at one of the pharmacies on 4th...stopped because the man forgot to put his mask on…and then he tried to put it on and he dropped his gun in the process, allowing the cashier to tackle him.”

She looks up at him, eyebrow raised.

“It does read out of a movie, doesn’t it?”

She laughs a little. People will always be people, even in a city still returning to its old vitality. She adds a wall of strange masks to her prison staging -- a concept for a show that will never happen. There’s something freeing about that, ironically enough. Connor glimpses at it every once in a while.

“What does this one mean?” he asks.

She taps her pencil against the book. “A-a-arrested development.”

She grins. He smiles back, though she’s not sure he gets the joke.

They sit in silence for a while, comfortable and warm. It’s normal. It’s what they can do together for many days yet to come -- a beautiful, glossy foresight into a future she wants with a sick desperation. It’s what they would have done all this time if she was normal.

Normal.

_All you do is bring him pain, he can’t love you like before, everything is---_

She chances a glance at his perfectly-hewn face and leans forward as if drawn by a spell. _Stop that. Stop it. I don’t want to think like that._ She leans her forehead against his jaw.

“My sunshine,” he whispers, and she feels a white hot needle jam into her chest, “what are you doing?”

“...y-y-y-your…?”

His grip tightens. “Ah...I’m sorry. You call me other names sometimes, and I’ve thought to maybe find one for you--”

...and, in a flash of weakness, she plants a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth ( _while she still can, while he’s still so interested in loving her--_ ).

He freezes in place for a long moment so she freezes, too. Stupid, Emma. Idiot.

\--until his arms suddenly tug her onto his lap, legs straddling him. She gasps in surprise, but even that is short-lived before he kisses her, one arm pulling her torso flat to his, the other carefully settling both his tablet and her small sketchbook aside. Her insides scratch and burn against the bottom of her gut.

He breaks away. He gives a deep sigh and sits there for a moment. His other hand settles on her lower back. “Does this hurt you at all?”

“I’m g-g-good,” she says, wincing in embarrassment.

“If it does…”

She sighs in mock frustration. He smiles and she laughs at the impish joy there, at the relief warming her bones.

He carefully carries her to the bed.

They get to know each other again with a strange new fragility. Despite the nights spent wrapped together, neither had been ready to open up in other ways. She _is_ good; the burning in her bones has long subsided to something more like manageable soreness, but his touch is still maddeningly gentle. She presses her whole body against his, exhausted of the separation, because _this_ is what she wants -- to be together so totally that she can find the parts of herself that surely live within him now.

His hands form a vice around her lower back and behind her neck as he kisses her deeply, heat from their open mouths reddening her cheeks. His grip loosens; before she can protest, his fingers suddenly slip under her shirt and he presses a kiss to her stomach, soft and burning. Her sharp intake of breath is loud enough she hears it echo, and she knows it shocks him because she feels it this time, the way his synthskin pulls back. She senses the real pulses of him waiting just beneath his fingertips. She wants to be painted by them, across--

<<ACCEPT INTERFACE: CONNOR.RK800?>>

But then he suddenly pulls back, taut and still. He slowly crawls forward until his elbows settle above her shoulders. He holds himself away from her for a moment.

Her thumbs trace his jawline. “Wh-wh-what?” she manages quietly.

“It’s...” His eyes rake her face, desperate. “I’m not sure what will happen if we accidentally interface.”

She shakes her head and taps his chin, ignoring the cruel panic gathering in her ribs. He’s breathing heavily, despite not needing to -- but maybe he does need to, if he’s upset.

“You…”

She digs her fingers into his hair and holds his gaze, letting the air in to cool everything down.

“...you were dying in my arms. And I could do _nothing._ And I can’t...I can’t stop thinking about it. No matter what I do.”

He scans her face, over and over. The anger that warps her vision for a moment is disembodied -- a single-minded desire to destroy whatever was causing him pain. But she can’t kill a memory.

“Y-you’re okay,” she whispers. “H-h-here. W-w-with me.”

She kisses just beneath his earlobe as if to try and say all the things her voice box keeps stopping. Her eyes feel heavy and warm and she forces them shut, pulling at him until he settles his full weight against her, and she absorbs the warmth of his body into her own like an inoculation. The world feels so new and raw. A butterfly could beat its wings and change everything.

“It’ll never happen again,” he says, mouth close to her ear. “I swear. No one will ever hurt you like that again.”

She’s familiar, now, with this oath of his. It’s his own demon, she realizes quietly, like her belief that his love will fade as soon as the sun sets.

“You d-d-didn’t fail m-me,” she says.

He’s choked by a quiet, staticky cry. Her eyes burn. She has to be strong for him, even as the faultlines between them become starkly clear. She has to find her own way across and so does he until they find each other in the middle.

 _It’s okay,_ she wills. _It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay._

* * *

Connor has taken to watching Emma look at herself in the mirror. The patterns have started to worry him.

Her lip twitches involuntarily from disgust and yet she leans inward, forehead close to the clear surface, examining without remorse. He’s scanned the eye line and telemetries and considered the evidence.

She’s watching behind her own eyes. He doesn’t like the expression on her face. He never does, when she’s like this.

“Emma,” he says softly. She still jumps. “It’s time to go.”

She clutches the deep green blazer that she and Ryker had found together at some consignment shop. “M-hmm,” she says, because it’s easier than saying ‘yes’ these days.

Connor gently takes the blazer from her hands. He helps her step into it. She used to fight him on this, but now he can ply her with softness in a way he hadn’t been allowed before...all this _._

She stands unusually still, so he puts her coat and scarf on, too. He likes the whisper of vulnerability when she allows him to _help_. She stands still long enough that he comes around the front of her to button up her nice wool coat. “Beautiful,” he says quietly. "Has anyone told you lately?"

Her jaw loosens slightly. She pokes him in the chest, but does not meet his gaze.

“You’re going to be fine,” he says. “Kamski accepted the meeting. He wouldn’t if he didn’t care to listen at all.”

She still doesn’t look at him. He brushes his thumb across her cheekbone.

“We can also stay home. You have the choice.”

She slumps. She leans forward until her forehead connects with his chest and she sighs so heavily he knows, having analyzed previous examples of this behavior, that she is either hiding tears or stifling a panic attack.

“Kamski is st-stupid and ugly,” she mutters into his jacket. “Someone has to t-t-tell him.”

He smiles in some relief. His arms circle her back. “You’re right,” he says, even though Kamski is objectively neither.

* * *

Elijah waits at his favored table at the zen teahouse. The air, lush with moisture, settles like a balm against his winter-chapped skin. The greenhouse glass walls keep this place perfectly warm in the dead of the Detroit winter and the staff is very good at keeping prying eyes otherwise away. The meandering garden is his favorite. He is fairly certain he is the main reason this place is still in business.

“Look at them,” Chloe says, voice high with excitement and gossip. She sits next to him, resplendent in periwinkle linen. He looks where she directs because he has no choice.

Emma and Connor follow a quiet waiter to the table. Emma is dressed in a forest green blazer that squeezes her broad shoulders and black slacks that hang a touch too loosely, face glossy with sweat. Connor is exactly as he ever is -- crisply dressed in a blazer and dark pants and a white button up, undeterred by the heat. But he also...isn’t the same. His shoulders are more relaxed than Kamski has ever seen them, though his face is intent. Emma never strays more than an arm’s length away from him. When Connor isn’t eying Kamski (even at this distance), he watches Emma as one watches a fountain in a courtyard -- at peace, ever wondering what would happen if he touched the crystalline beads of water...

Change is not only possible but inevitable, Elijah notes. And there’s an inevitability to today.

“Just you and me?” Elijah asks as Emma sits across from him. Chloe corrals Connor to a separate table. A strange knowing passes between the two women.

“He has his business. I h-h-h-have mine.”

He sips his tea. “You two are very interesting together.”

“E-e-everybody got their opinion.” She says _opinion_ in the same tone one would say _snot._

“How long would you say you were friends with him before...?”

“Months.” Her tone breeches no interrogations.

Elijah sets his tea cup on the glass table with a satisfying _clink._ “But you aren’t sure how he’ll react to what's to come. _You_ don't even know what's to come.”

Her thick lips curl upward in a snarl. The wrinkles around her young eyes tighten and her nostrils flare -- an entire hand of poker revealed across a cascade of expressions. A mess, honestly. Connor is one of the most advanced androids alive and yet he chooses to mingle with one of the chaotic examples of human life Elijah has ever met.

“N-not here for you to be a c-c-condescending dickwad, man. I d-d-don’t think you like the _truth_ , either.”

He subsumes a frown far beneath the layers and layers he wears in the presence of human company. “You want to risk a lot for this truth you don’t even like that much.”

“Don’t be c-cute with me.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t have to help you, you know.”

He’d once in his life expertly hidden behind the marble inside his own mind palace. Now he fears the exact kind of look Emma is giving him right now.

Angry. Vulnerable. Hurting. _Knowing._

“I’m not exactly g-g-good company,” she says.

He taps the glass table with his finger. “Why do you want to do this now?”

She sighs, girding herself for a long series of words. “Lots of a-a-ngry messages in the press right now. Anti-android. But androids...are n-n-not only b-b-based on...y-y-y-y…”

Her fist clenches.

“It’s alright,” he says, and he means it. She takes two deep breaths.

“Y-y-your design. But also. Hu-hu-human...experiments. Huu-uu-u--” She winces hard enough that in the corner of Elijah’s eye, he can see Connor turn their way. Elijah opens his mouth to assure her again, but she presses on, fist pushing hard against the table. “Nope. Don’t st-stop me. Therapist s-says it d-d-doesn’t help.” She lets out another rough sigh, then sucks in a large breath and slides into: “...yuman nervous system adaptations. We’re...a lot closer than people want to believe.”

Elijah sets his chin on his templed fingers. “It _was_ a computer error. Deviancy.”

“Wetware. _Unpredictable._ ” That wild hair of hers tumbles to her other shoulder as her head tilts. “You u-used that. For...rA9.”

“I didn’t make rA9,” he says honestly. “I...created backdoors. I made the programming open-ended because that’s what fit best with the way thirium processes in the system. But I never made rA9.”

Her gaze does not waver.

“D-d-did...did you know? About m-me?”

Hmm.

He could say no, and have it be true, and she could walk away feeling satisfied and he could keep everything else in his deck. She’s not particularly artful. But that’s not what Chloe wants him to do. And Chloe doesn’t ask for much.

Just for him to be _better._

“I...always wondered,” he says. “They found out how to send exaflops of information through an artificial brain mesh without frying it. Human brains can do that, of course. Human nervous systems send massive amounts of information through our bodies. Mechanical brains have historically always been...limited by grids and clusters and memory. And thirium took care of some of that. But it was too unpredictable. The geometries weren’t right.”

She doesn’t say anything. His mouth twitches. The electronic information stored in thirium was notoriously unstable -- but that was the beauty of its design. It wanted to find an endpath on its own. Elijah simply laid the roads. Genesis had...clarified the map.

How much more _alive_ the prototypes had become, after Genesis offered up their research.

“I...never had reason to know for sure. How they came up with the answers they had.”

If he watches her for long enough, he can see an orange light flash behind her impossibly dark eyes.

“But I always feared,” he says quietly.

He funded the anti-biohacking laws. On paper for curious lobbyists, it was all about limiting the flow of thirium and the potentiality for crimes related to Cyberlife’s merchandise. Prosthetics, too, were a big potential business and Cyberlife wanted to be in control.

Are the laws bizarre infringements on personal liberty? Maybe. Are they hypocritical? Extremely.

She leans back in her chair.

“So you play the game and pray you make a difference,” he says. “You let a revolution happen on your back doorstep and hope no one asks questions.”

“Sounds like a sh-shitty game.”

“It’s the game you’re about to play.”

“No.” She finally picks up the tea cup. “You can help me end some of that dumb sh-shit and you know it.”

She downs at least half of the jasmine rose blend -- a delicate flavor profile, unerringly classy -- in one go. She settles the cup down with an undignified _clank._  

He purses his lips.

“Emma. Let me give you the lay of the land. You’re going to need to get New Jericho’s support and make contacts with not only the press but politicians and Cyberlife,” Elijah says. “You’ll be harangued with questions, _if_ the press corps is even primed to believe you. People will dig into your past. Your parents. You could see their names smeared. You may never be able to leave your house alone again, if it goes poorly, and we honestly have no idea how this would go if every variable was in our favor. You could damage your life prospects on a whim.”

She blanches.

“You’ve been through enough pain,” he says. “So why do _you_ want to do this?”

She takes in a stuttering breath. “Cuz I have the b-b-bits, _Kamski._ ” He hasn’t heard his name used as a pejorative in a while. “Truth will out. And I get to choose. What I d-d-d-d--”

She cuts herself off with an angry huff. He feels a strange twinge in the savannah of his chest cavity. Once upon a time, he’d been in speech therapy as a child. Once upon a time, his brain lived in fear of all the things he couldn’t say. He didn’t have the words to join his peers. He didn’t have any way to _explain._

“You’re going to risk much for our androids,” he says.

She picks the tea cup back up with another angry clatter. “Wouldn’t you?” She watches the tea swirl with squinting eyes. “It’s not like I c-c-can _unmake_ myself.”

He stares. He contends with all the costs he did not pay. Emma drinks the rest of the tea as if to hide from something larger than them both, gulping down the delicate blend, and he feels an old spark of eureka inspiration watching this trashy, reckless woman in the most expensive tea garden in Detroit.

Chloe _is_ going to be the death of him, one way or another. Hubris leaves no man alive.

* * *

“I’ve been so curious after you,” Chloe says, remarkably generous.

Connor tries very hard not to turn around to check on the human conversation going on behind him. Chloe took the chair with the clear view of the other duo, clearly on purpose. He taps his fingers against his leg and bounces his knee.

“I’m not so interesting,” he says quietly.

“That’s not true at all. I’ve been keeping up with your work.”

He shifts in his chair. A pinging discomfort lights up his sensors. For a single moment in the past, he considered shooting her point blank to preserve the torn scraps of a mission that had always been outside of his grasp. And she finds him _curious._

“You’re interested in police work?” he asks politely.

“Well, yours,” she says. “You _are_ the first android detective.”

“I am considering a change,” he admits -- suddenly, openly, out in the blue. She sits up, and he feels as though he has just stepped into a trap.

“Oh?” Her twinkling curiosity hides illegal weaponry, of this he is certain. He redirects, as if they are sparring.

“What do you do, Chloe?”

“Me?” She leans in conspiratorially, setting her chin on the top of her hand. “I look for projects. They’re like little tests that also help people. I think I found a very interesting one.”

Her gaze shifts to the humans for a sparkling little moment, so Connor turns and looks at Emma. Her back is to him, but from her curled in posture he can tell she is fighting for every word -- fighting hard enough that Kamski is watching her with a mix of flabbergast, curiosity and horror.

If she can do it...

“There’s not many protocols for this,” he mutters. He’s going to have to make up the rules. He’s going to have to decide how it gets done and what it means and why he wants to do it.

Chloe smiles. “I think that sounds grand.”

There were no protocols for Emma, either, he recalls. For how he felt.

“I suppose it might be,” he allows.

* * *

[Kamski said he is going to help,] Emma writes on her tablet once they are safely ensconced in the automatic black car. She’s exhausted from talking. [But more waiting.]

“Good,” Connor says, as she knew he would. “You -- _we_ need to.”

She grumbles but can’t disagree. The list of things they need to gather before they act is daunting, to say the least. It’ll likely take months. He looks very seriously at her.

“Chloe gave me a whole list of winter activities that might interest you as distractions.”

[Doesn’t work if you call them distractions.]

“Really?” A smile. “You’d refuse an afternoon of sledding and hot cocoa with me?”

She gives him a withering look. His smile is beatific, as if duplicity is foreign to him. She sinks into the car leather, tired and teetering, defenses down.

[Can I ask something very stupid?]

“You can do anything you like so long as it keeps you in the confines of this car.”

She smiles a little, despite the dark thoughts rolling around in her head. She types out the words and holds them in her lap for a moment, certain and afraid but needy, all the same.

[Will you still love me after I reveal all the shit?]

He reads her words for an unusually long time, considering he can read at nigh instantaneous speeds. “...you’re afraid of that?” he asks.

She shrugs, typing on her tablet to avoid his eyes. [I know it’s...illogical.]

“Very.” He moves his leg so it bumps hers. “Did I do something…?”

She gestures wildly, hands crossing back and forth. _No!_ “Th-th-this is j-just...me.”

He tilts his head. “You’ve inspired me, actually.” She’s afraid to ask what that means, and luckily, he continues on without prodding. “I’m going to accept Markus’ offer.” He stares at nothing, as if realizing the weight of his words as he says them. “I’m...going to work with New Jericho instead of the DPD. Though...I'm sure my work with the DPD will continue in some form...”

Joy sparks in her chest. It’s good to hear him decide. She keeps her face level, however, for his sake. He looks so unsure. [Good! But why now?]

“Like I said. You’re doing the brave thing. The dangerous thing. And someone is going to have to help manage it.”

[But you’re not doing it _for_ me, right?]

“While you might classify as a slow-moving natural disaster, no.”

She laughs. What else can you do?

“I…” His jaw works as he thinks. “They’re definitely going to need the help. And I’m ready to try something else. I think.”

She feels weirdly ebullient at this revelation, despite the difficulties she knows this will entail. They’re both moving in ways they hadn’t been before all this. There’s a brightness around the edges of everything if she squints hard enough; the prospects of the future are unknown but it can’t all be bad, if their togetherness is any indication. She pats his hand before she writes him a message.

[You ever think about the fact that we've known each other less than a year?]

He laughs, and it’s a strangely rough sound. Unpracticed. “I was thinking about when we met, actually,” he says. “You asked if I was going to arrest you. Which is a very strange thing to ask a person you don’t know.”

She tries not to laugh too loud as she writes. [I remember, too.] And she hardly ever remembers first meetings since so few of them end up mattering. Maybe that should have been a sign all along. [You freaked me out because you were so handsome. Maybe you should have done it just to see what I’d done.]

He watches her like he’s solving an old puzzle.

“I don’t think that would have worked,” he says, a little intensely. “You’d have never forgiven me for putting you in jail.”

She grins. [Nope. Never.]

“And I wouldn’t want to mess up whatever convinced you to be my friend.”

[You and me, both.] And isn’t that just how it goes? Weird shit happens every day. You can’t guess which things will end up mattering. But no matter what fucking happens, she is going to hold onto this. [It’s you and me and the rest of time.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emma: wow some weird shit has happened to us in like a few weeks time  
> connor: ....you mean life doesn't have to be a series of weird plot events happening to you?  
> emma: shit you're like one years old i forgot.
> 
>  
> 
> :') one more chapter left kiddies. can't believe we made it this far. thanks for your love and readership and let me know how you're doing. even if your comment is just a notation about your day, i will cherish it.
> 
> But as I've said, this isn't the end for Emma and crew! Not only are there companion stories to read, but a sequel will be in the works soon as well. If you're interested in keeping up with that, I suggest subscribing or bookmarking the series or [joining our discord](https://discord.gg/ycH62ZJ)!! We are quiet but fun and lurkers are welcome. A very chill land.
> 
> A million thanks, as ever <3


	20. in the old garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She smiles and his LED settles back into blue. The next day always comes around, whether you ask it to or not.

After more days of therapy and healing and waiting for her mind to settle, Emma wakes up alone to the smell of coffee and bacon. She sneaks into the bathroom to reckon with the mirror.

Connor hates this routine, she knows, and so she takes what time she can while she has it.

She rubs her eyes free of crunchy sleep and throws her thick hair behind her head as she leans inward over the sink, toward the mirror framed in sticky notes. Her hands clench around the cool porcelain. Even with the tools Natalie taught her in therapy (oh yes, back to basics, she recalls flippantly), the fight-or-flight response kicks in ferociously. Her guts flip inside out. Her lungs squeeze.

Orange light blinks in the back of her eyes. She resists, as she resists every day, the urge to claw her eyes out of her skull.

That’s what _control_ feels like.

Today she reckons with it because she knows Connor and Ryker and everyone will be reckoning with something today, the day being what it is. _Will you be going?_ Ryker had asked, and they seemed so strangely surprised when she said yes. _Why would you want to?_

_Well, I built the fuckin’ stages for it_ , she said at the time, and that was true. But she suspects that surrounding herself with people remembering a pain so far beyond her experience that she frankly will never be able to relate will be strangely liberating.

She’ll have room to think about her own shit without the heavy, sympathetic glances of everyone in the room. Is that selfish? Sure. But maybe she’s owed just a little bit of that, if she’s owed anything at all.

Owing is another question she didn’t have time to unpack.

“You don’t need to invite anyone else inside if you don’t want to,” Natalie warned her the day before. “You have to grapple with this in the ways that feel empowering to you.”

She knows that Natalie was speaking, vaguely, of the cameras and barking questions that would soon descend upon Detroit and the man she loved more than her own damn skin. Remembrance Day is meant to do that. But that isn’t what she thinks of in the day to day.

_Accept sitting still for another moment._

_Accept you can’t help everyone at the cost of yourself._

So she throws down the gauntlet at her own robotic gaze and confronts the uselessness of waiting day to day for the impossible proof -- like catching thunder in a jar -- that she’ll ever be _over_ this. She’s bigger than it. Stronger than the inexplicable geysers of fury that well in her chest when she takes too long to think about it.

Maybe.

Connor finds her then. She meets his gaze in the mirror. Her heart rattles its old cage, seeing the pain that skitters across his features before he settles into a strategic smile. As if she didn’t catch it.

“Sorry,” she says.

“Breakfast is ready,” he says cheerfully, pointedly guiding her by the shoulders out of the bathroom and out of sight of any other reflective materials. Some days she snaps at him for this.

Not today. Today is hard enough.

* * *

_To my fellow androids. To my human friends._

_We come together to remember the year that has passed in peace. To celebrate our new lives, blessed by fellowship and camaraderie. To take heart in our accomplishments. To bear witness._

Markus’ voice rings out across the stage and on the air to a world caught in a moment. Flags of every country and creed flap against the clear twilight sky, including the flag of New Jericho: the old Jericho symbol in blue against white.

These are the moments they remember.

_For many of us, today is a reminder not just of the new day, but of the long night. The loss and the pain lives side by side with new joy in our memories. Each of us, blue blood or red, has a story to tell -- a story of darkness and hate, of perseverance, of walking through the tunnel on a single promise of the light._

Emma sits among the Detroit Volunteer Corps, ass freezing against the plastic fold-out chair. The group is given a place of honor in the audience to the right of the stage (though Emma has done little as of late except build that stage -- which looks damn good, all things considered). Valerie sits next to her, spine straight, eyes misting -- a hint to the woman behind the rough-hewn mask. But Emma’s gaze dances between two spots: Ryker, Messi and Chase fidgeting in the central crowd and Connor, sitting tensely on the stage next to North, Simon and Josh. Connor’s eyes meet hers.

She thinks of Anjali’s house rebuild. She thinks of her shitty little theater restoration. She thinks of dirty hands and the intense focus of doing something you know you’re good at -- in fixing things that need it and patching holes to stop old leaks. She figured out how to survive before. Her identity may shift, but it doesn’t change certain truths.

She smiles and his LED settles back into blue. The next day always comes around, whether you ask it to or not.

_As I reflect upon this year, those stories are what stay with me. How hard each and every person listening here today has worked. And the work...it really has been hard. There’s no other word for it. We have to recognize the struggle in all its forms to prevent the inevitable plateau of progress._

In Connor’s pocket is his small sketchbook gifted by Emma, laying flat against his leg. He can’t retrieve it during the speech, though he is sorely tempted. These days, he draws to seek a way around the perfection of memory and to accept that he may not know every answer.

He watches Emma carefully, analyzing her slumped form in her seat. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she didn’t care at all about what was going on. But he did know her. He knows now the little codes to her behavior that others weren’t privy to. He sees the way she avoids looking at Valerie’s unusually intense display of emotion, the way she keeps a careful eye on Ryker and the others, the way she tilts her head when Markus says something that makes her think, eyes focusing elsewhere for a long moment. Pride sparks in his regulator. He _knows,_ not because of a mission protocol but because he thought to accept her friendship.

<People are going to ask what you’re looking at.> North’s teasing voice in his head.

He turns to see Simon and North both smiling gently at him.

The only way out is forward. But he doesn’t have to do it alone.

_Because the struggle is not just standing in the cold before the barrel of a gun, unsure if you’ll live to see another day. It’s not just holding your breath as you vault over fences or hitch rides on buses or crawl out of your own grave on the hope that there is something better. Struggle lives in the gentleness of trying. In the daily insistence upon a dignified life._

Ryker squints at the dirt and the grass, crushed from frost and thousands of pairs of feet. Remembrance Day. What nonsense.

Ryker had spent over 365 days trying to forget what had happened on November 11, 2038, only for it to be shoved right back in their face on December 1, 2039. Isn’t the day to day remembrance enough? The clock ticks down fast and unrelenting and they don’t need to be reminded of all the time that’s somehow passed them by.

For the first time they winterize the garden and store tools but not themselves -- yet a form of storage has started there, too. They look to Emma, slumped pointedly in her chair, watching Connor, and they feel the wind slice their plastic skin open. They push themselves inward, forcing themselves to give her up.

She won’t need them anymore. And who will they be when they aren’t needed?

What’s left, when it’s just you and the dirt?

They glance to Messi, fidgeting up a storm in the chair next to theirs. The small MP200 model hates being surrounded by so many people, but she refused to let Ryker and Chase go without her “in case something goes wrong” -- a sentiment Ryker is both charmed and disturbed by. Sometimes they wonder what Messi knows. Chase, an HR300 whose better days are here and ahead of him, watches Messi with his perfected mix of feigned annoyance and heightened concern.

“Chase,” Messi whispers, though her whisper is nearly loud enough to be speech on its own. Chase leans inward. She points vociferously at Markus, dark hair falling in sheets in front of her eyes. “Chase, isn’t that--!”

Chase shushes her loud enough that people turn to look at the three of them. “No talking right now, Messi, okay?”

“But Chase--”

“Yesit’shim,” Chase says, sharply and quickly enough to sound like a single-worded rebuke.

Well. There may be time, yet.

_My father, Carl Manfred -- [Markus falls silent for a long moment, looking upward, as if offering a prayer. Even the journalists providing commentary on-air seem afraid to interrupt the silence that befalls the crowd until Markus' gaze finally returns to the androids surrounding him, eyes shining.]_

_Carl often joked that human beings were cursed with the weight of existence. Free will is a heavy thing. Too easily, it can be warped into a weapon to bludgeon those who would wrong you. It can be twisted by fear into a garrote against progress. But we know better, don't we?_

Elijah leans up against his standing work desk and watches Markus, coffee in hand. The cameras have always served the RK200 well, even as the news channels try to web him in chyrons. His face is, after all, one of a kind. Elijah had made sure of that.

Chloe stands at the terminal nearby, plugging in coefficients and controls for their upcoming thirium experiment. But her eyes keep flicking to the thin TV screen.

“Everything he says feels like...truth,” Chloe says thoughtfully. “I’m not really sure how else to explain it.”

“It’s a useful skill to have,” Elijah agrees.

Chloe’s eyes lock with his over her screen. “It’s not just a _skill._ ”

Elijah smirks and returns to his own terminal, perusing files on thirium and the original design of the woman staring at him judgmentally now. He must ready his tongue for something other than easy lies. Indeed, if Markus has done anything, he’s done what humans are afraid to do: usher in a new era of verity at the cost of old comforts.

Elijah takes a sip of his coffee and savors it.

When the world moves beyond you, it’s another form of freedom.

_Free will is a weight. But it is a weight we bear to more keenly see the bright horizons of a vibrant and necessary world. With clear eyes, we see the gift we've been granted and we, since the first day of our liberation on November 11, 2038, have sought to use this gift to rise above the easy choices. Hatred is a choice. Anger is a choice._

At their home on the outskirts of Detroit proper, Claire Ibori-Brown and Dayo Brown look at each other curiously. Knowingly.

Claire turns back to the TV in silence. The cameras linger on Connor for a long moment as Markus’ speech continues. His eyes are not on Markus, but somewhere off-screen -- and that’s all Claire needs to relax back in her seat. To understand the depth of what has transpired.

Dayo’s mouth curls into a grin. He’s seen the look on Connor’s face before. It was his own, not so long ago, when Shara brought a young Emma home to meet them.

Absolutely mystified, even still.

_And on that day, we said no._

_And on this day, and on every day after, we all must continue to rise up as one voice and say no to those who would tell brothers to turn on one another. Say no to those that claim sisters cannot be bonded across oceans of experience. Say no to those who would say that peace is a lie, that war is inevitable, that the color of your blood or your skin or the pages of your creed or the God you worship are reasons enough to act out in fury and curse your fellow beings on this Earth._

Hank, in the audience in downtown Detroit, sits with other representatives from the DPD in his dress blues, back straight against his fucking uncomfortable chair. But he’ll admit it: the uniform fits better now than it has in a long time.

Chris is next to him, clenching his hands tightly in his lap, face a strange mask of emotion, and Fowler is on the other side, arms crossed and straining against his jacket. But Hank only has eyes for Connor, sitting attentively on the stage. Hank battles with the choking tide of hot emotion, sudden as a storm, rising in his chest. The pride and the hope jolt so hard that the yawning void in his head releases an iota of landmass from its crushing hold. He finds a place to stand amidst the old muck in his head.

Hank listens to Markus and he lets himself _wonder_. Like a goddamn kid.

Heh.

_We, all of us listening today, are stronger than the tide of anger. With hands held together, we can use free will for what it was always meant: to wrought a better world. To bend the arc of the universe toward justice, mercy and honor. To look to our neighbor and lift them up from the shadow so that we may all, each and every being here, stand in the light._

_Each person we leave behind in darkness will leave marks, too, on our skin. And I know for certain that together, we can build a better world where no one need be bruised._

Very few people like to linger in Cyberlife tower these days. All the more reason for Jason to relish in the cool calm of his dark office and watch the RK200 move the world on words alone. He squints at the bright TV screen, seeking the hints on the edges the cameras try to hide.

This is what he’s good at: deconstructing something down to its parts. Once you understand, you can control, make, unmake. Those words don’t play too well in the press for the former director of the “humanization department” at Cyberlife, but so it goes. The building blocks of life are not so holy. It’s the interactions between them that truly spark.

And the TV has been full of interesting characters of late.

He never thought he’d see that boy’s face again, even in echoes, but he refuses to pin the dark circles collecting under his eyes on what’s likely some sad, strange _coincidence_. It gives the past too much power to linger on what could be true.

And yet. He recalls the reports on the boy and his statement, meticulously gathered by his lone agent, and he recalls the “unnamed civilian” also rescued from the “unsanctioned” op that rescued Connor Anderson -- RK800, #51. The camera cuts to Valerie Tyler, leader of the Detroit Volunteer Corps, and a red-headed woman sitting tersely in the chair next to her.

There.

Another strange coincidence.

He sips La Croix and feels something. The old hum of strategy shifting pieces into place. A fading flame showing a path out of these damned woods.

Certainly not _remorse._

_Thank you, each of you, for listening. For making that choice. For remembering. Thank you._

Silence falls as the last of his speech settles like dust.

Josh had helped Markus write this speech, pouring over metaphors and tablets of samples from the better speeches of the past two centuries. North pressed her hand into his and Simon stood at his shoulder and together they yanked this speech out of a mass of indecision and pain and the fury of a world moving outside them. Angry voices await him. He’s pushed at every side. Soon, he’ll know how many ways he can bend.

But for now, the crowd rises in thunderous, standing applause.

Markus, for the first time in weeks, takes a deep, steadying breath.

* * *

As quickly as it comes together, so too does the ceremony -- complete with choir song and speeches from the mayor of Detroit and the President of the goddamn United States -- end. Emma fades into the crowd, following the directive Connor had given her earlier in the evening. _Meet me near the park’s gate_ , he said, _and I’ll get you out of this place._

But Valerie had handed her a paper lantern with a strange look in her eye before Emma could escape. “Make a wish,” the woman intoned. “You could use a little luck.”

So her wandering is slow. She takes in the time to listen to the conversations freely flowing around her as the crowd disperses to their next objective. She hears the big aspirations. The small things, like where to meet and how to get home. She realizes she can’t tell the difference between the human and android members of the crowd at all, if she closes her eyes.

She can blend in, too. Be known, but not known. Old habits.

She places her palms against the cool brick of the gatewall, and lets the rough stones dig into her skin until she hears a familiar voice press in close, calling her name. Connor reaches her two seconds later, carefully peeling her hand from the wall to wrap it in his own.

“You should be wearing gloves,” he says softly. He rubs her hand between both of his as if to warm it, pulling her closer to him as he does so. He looks down with the ghost of a smile on his lips. He’ll always be like this. Watching for dangers she’ll never recognize in time.

“The cameras will see you,” she says, because she can’t help it. Her voice has returned, though she still speaks slowly to avoid tripping up over basic words. He’s wearing a black wool coat and slacks and a soft blue scarf and looks entirely too handsome to be cavorting with someone like her, in weirdly loose dark pants and a thick, green windbreaker. It was too cold to fuck around with trying too hard.

“You aren’t my secret,” he says, a little too seriously. It makes her laugh. She bumps the paper lantern against his chest, feeling warm inside.

“Help me make a wish. And then we can go home.”

“A wish?”

She feels a strange fluttering inside as they rejoin the crowd.

“Think about something you want, more than anything in the world. Okay? It doesn’t have to be realistic or anything, and then,” she says, putting a finger up to stop him from opening his mouth, “keep it to yourself. If you tell anyone, it won’t come true.”

He gives her one of those old looks -- like she’s an encryption he’s still trying to crack -- but there’s a warmth to it now that pools in her gut.

He takes her arm in his. “Then I’ll never tell,” he says quietly.

They reach their spot overlooking the Detroit River with the rest of the crowd. The skyline dances on the water, fragile and refracted -- not quite lit for night, but a touch too dark for this late in the day. Lighters are passed through the crowd. A whistle blows.

Connor and Emma lift their hands to the sky and let their lantern go floating into a sea of yellow lights. They stand close together, her shoulder blade against his chest, his arm circling round to pull her inward, away from the rising wind. She hears the approach of Ryker’s crutches and the jabbering of Messi and Chase, talking of nothing and everything -- the cold, the cameras, the lights like paint on a dark canvas. They watch until the lantern becomes little more than a pinpoint against the wider horizon, mysterious and blue.

Soon, Connor will be flying out to D.C. to begin his negotiations. Soon, she’ll be writing statements with Josh and Chloe regarding all the things she’s still struggling to understand. For now, she leans into the warmth of Connor’s arms and places a hand on Ryker’s shoulder. She keeps her eyes open even as they start to mist, saving the moment to her forever memory. There will be time for all that.

She’s where she belongs. The lights float away on the winter wind, but she knows the spring will come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter may have taken me the longest to write because I got sad every time thinking about it being over. But y'all we did it!
> 
> Special thanks to:
> 
> -Popsicle, essentially the beta, for bravely asking if we could write more about Ryker and Emma together. Look how far we've come babeyyy!  
> -Cait, for your fiery love and caring so deeply for the garden babs and creating Chase!  
> -Medic, for the creation of Messi and general positive light they bestow upon the world!!  
> -Masq, for the writing sprint that made Markus' speech possible for this chapter and general DBH OC shenanigans. If you haven't read [Vanishing Point](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15140150/chapters/35107829), do it.  
> -Everybody at the Jericho discord server and the Yellow LED discord server (linked below) for enabling me constantly with ideas and encouragement.  
> -Ian the husband for putting up with my random tech questions.  
> -AND LITERALLY EVERY PERSON WHO READ AND COMMENTED AND LEFT KUDOS!!! I owe you my life.
> 
> THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for going on this journey with me and Emma! <3  
> I hope you'll let me know what you thought. And potentially stick around for the upcoming sequel!! It's still in planning stages. But if you want to be the first person to know when it will drop, subscribe/bookmark the 'a garden in detroit' series and join one of the discords linked below!! Also follow me on tumblr @witchfall (though tumblr has been going thru Some Shit lately so if it goes to the great social media pasture in the sky hit me up on disc.)
> 
> Love you. This isn't the end.


	21. {[sequel reveal and preview]}

In the aftermath of the Abel disaster and the revelations about her childhood, Emma Ibori has kept busy preparing to end the secrecy surrounding her life and the true origin of androids. Connor, meanwhile, continues to pester Markus about the feasibility of human-android marriage laws.

But Emma’s life no longer feels like her own...a vagary made from Connor's increasingly busy schedule, the strange looks her best friend Ryker gives her when they think she isn't looking, and an exhaustion born of a dread that sinks into her bones from simply leaving the house.

When she finally acts, the axis tilts -- but not as she expects. To keep Emma and Connor safe from a growing terrorist threat (and a Cyberlife executive sniffing where he shouldn’t be), Jericho is going to make a spectacle of the one thing she wants to keep to herself: her singular relationships with the RK800 and WR600.

But as the world turns its glaring eyes their way, how long can their silent fault lines hold?

* * *

 

_April 2040_

_Even with Connor in D.C., it takes Emma, Chase, Messi and Ryker little more than an afternoon to pack up the entirety of Emma’s physical life into boxes. That’s how she finds herself alone in an empty bedroom -- once hers, but barely ever that -- riding the sharp waves of a sudden whim._

_She pulls the memory box out of the dusty top shelf of her closet and settles it on the carpet with a thick clank. She feels a little high from the remnant dust as she digs into the sea of school photos, report cards, flimsy movie tickets and plastic vacation baubles for the sake of...what?_

_She searches until she finds the photo some part of her remembered. Her father and mother -- Ji-hun and Shara -- smiling together at the head of a long table. The lighting is poor; someone was taking photos with the flash on. But Mom has flowers woven into her curls. Her dress is a simple cream color with a boatline neck and her laughing grin is radiant. Dad is laughing, too, teeth perfect white, navy suit wrinkled but fitted, purple bowtie slightly askew. His arm is around her mother’s shoulders. Their cheeks nearly touch._

_She can almost hear her mother’s voice, honeyed and happy for once. “Oh, we had no money. Both of us in post-grad. We just hurried and married. That’s what we wanted to do.”_

_She turns the photo around to read the writing on the back. “Shara and Ji-hun wedding, June 1, 2013.” She does the math in her head and realizes: she is older than they are in this photo. The dissonance makes her chest feel numb._

_But their love could reignite the sun._

_She covets a memory like this for herself so viciously that she has to close her eyes and go somewhere else in her head. Because that’s what she’s looking for, for reasons hard to fathom -- proof that even lives that end in tragedy could still see bright spots of joy._

 

* * *

 

The sequel story to 'a silver lining still remains' [is now live here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639423/chapters/41594129) Come and see what nonsense the crew is getting up to once again. (Or click that handy little 'next work' button below!)

**Author's Note:**

> Join us [in the "a garden in detroit" discord](https://discord.gg/ycH62ZJ)! Lurkers more than welcome!  
> Also featured in the [Yellow LED: dbh fanfic server](https://discord.gg/tmup4dp) \-- come hang out with us and read a bunch of great dbh fanfic!


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